Connectivity corridor analysis for Massasaugas at Ojibway Prairie (finally) published!

Posted onOctober 21, 2020byOjibway Massasauga|Massasauga Rattlesnake, News and Events, Ojibway Prairie Reptile Recovery, Species at Risk

What is the Ojibway Prairie Reptile Recovery Program? The Ojibway Prairie Complex and Greater Park Ecosystem (OPCGPE) in Ontario’s Windsor-LaSalle region is home to several reptile species threatened by urban development, habitat fragmentation and road mortality, including eastern foxsnakes, Butler’s gartersnakes, Blanding’s turtles and a critically endangered population of massasauga rattlesnakes. The Ojibway Prairie Reptile Recovery Team (OPRREC) works to protect, recover and monitor these species.

An important part of the Ojibway Prairie Reptile Recovery program (OPRREC) in Ontario is that we share the results of our endangered species recovery work with the greater scientific community. This allows the possibility for conservation practitioners to learn from each other. One way that we share our work is by presenting results at conferences and in professional society newsletters. The gold standard, however, is to have our work published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. This ensures that our methods, results and interpretations have undergone scrutiny by other researchers in the field, and provides the reader with greater confidence in the results being presented. Also, the process of preparing our work for publication provides a renewed opportunity to reflect on the work and to substantially “polish” the communication of our research projects. But of course, all this is easier said than done! You can imagine that it takes a lot of preparation time to have research results formally submitted – and after multiple rounds of revisions – hopefully accepted for publication. With many competing projects on the go at any given time, it can be very difficult to squeeze in this important, but time consuming, process.

On that note I am very happy to announce the recent publication of one of our projects in the open-access and peer-reviewed journal Land! Titled “Identifying Potential Connectivity for an Urban Population of Rattlesnakes (Sistrurus catenatus) in a Canadian Park System”, this project is the culmination of what originally began as a master’s thesis, and was recently revived with new analyses, figures, and interpretations. The study was a collaboration between Jonathan Choquette and Matthew Macpherson, both of WPC, and Dr. Robert Corry of the University of Guelph. We used a GIS corridor modelling tool to identify seven potential connectivity corridors between five core habitats for the Massasaugas at Ojibway Prairie. We also evaluated a subset of the corridors using aerial imagery and actual snake road mortality data. It was really satisfying to see that four of the potential corridors intersected roads through or near snake road mortality hotspots. The full paper can be viewed online, free of charge, at the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/9/9/313.

Broadly, we hope that the approach we used will provide guidance for others interested in mapping corridors for endangered reptiles in urbanizing landscapes. Specifically, this work will help guide the OPRREC team in identifying where to conduct conservation interventions aimed at recovering and reconnecting Massasaugas and other endangered snakes in the globally rare tallgrass prairie ecosystem at Ojibway Prairie. In fact, the results of the corridor analysis presented in the paper have been influencing work on the OPRREC program behind-the-scenes for a couple of years now. For example, the installation of barrier fencing, location of proposed ecopassages, and creation of a 5km long wildlife corridor, are all projects that have been informed by our corridor analysis. The full results of the analysis that only a few have been privy to, however, will now finally seen the light of day.

Jonathan Choquette

Lead Biologist, Ojibway Prairie Reptile Recovery

Jonathan manages the recovery program for the Ojibway population of the Massasauga rattlesnake in Southern Ontario. Jonathan is a habitat expert, studying both biology and landscape architecture at the University of Guelph. As an academic for many years, Jonathan has published numerous articles about the importance of habitat for reptiles and amphibians.