A research project monitoring urban wildlife in and around Regina will officially go into its second year in Queen City.
The goal of the project is to understand the types of wildlife found within the city.
collaboration between Royal Saskatchewan Museum And University of Regina It started in the fall of 2021 with 17 biodiversity monitoring stations dotted around the city.
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“What we hope the project will accomplish is understand how wildlife in the urban environment has changed over time,” said Ryan Fisher, Royal Saskatchewan Museum of Vertebrate Zoology curator.
“We have our first year of data, and hopefully it will give us a baseline and hopefully record wildlife for many years to come.”
The stations remained active for one month in each of the four seasons, taking pictures and recordings of large mammals, bird songs, and bat calls.
Photo captured by the Royal Saskatchewan Museum shows a gray partridge outside in the snow.
Courtesy of the Government of Saskatchewan
According to a press release from the Saskatchewan government, the songs of 41 bird species were recorded in the fall and winter periods and researchers are currently listening to summer recordings when there are plenty of bird species in town.
“Cities like Regina can provide valuable habitat for wildlife conservation and management,” Fisher said. The project has so far recorded 13 mammal species on camera, ranging from moose to white-tailed deer to American mink.
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The museum’s research covers several locations in the city.
The stations are evenly distributed in locations in central Regina, on the outskirts of the city and some in more natural areas outside the city limits.
“This design helps researchers understand how different levels of urban development affect wildlife,” Fisher said. Over the past year, the tracking cameras have been active for more than 50,000 hours of monitoring and the microphones have recorded more than 500 hours of audio recordings.
“(It’s) a lot of information for the research team to wade through.”
In the second year of the research project, the museum plans to expand into new areas of the city to capture more data.
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