In the Rocky Mountain Foothills of Northeast British Columbia, a topographically diverse landscape contains plant communities reflecting the influence of intersecting ecozones: the boreal forest, the Great Plains, the Western Cordillera, and the Western Arctic. Traditionally, Indigenous people and guide-outfitters managed this landscape using prescribed burning to enhance habitat for multiple ungulate species. While bison were extirpated from the region in the early 20th century, there was an accidental introduction of 50 Plains Bison in the 1970’s, followed by population growth to more than 1000 animals by the year 2006. Beginning in the early 1990’s, the Province of BC Range Program created a network of wildlife exclosures and associated permanent plots to study long-term plant community successional trends and the consequences of ungulate use and prescribed burning. The “bison and burning” research project (field work completed from 2020 to 2023) includes repeat sampling and addition of new plots - and is the capstone to thirty years’ of detailed ecosystem information collected in this landscape. We find post-burn successional trends, climate change-driven ecosystem regime shifts, and ancient ecological relationships restored by the introduction of bison. An apparent recent decline in the bison population is happening at the same time as expansion of boreal forest into arctic and seral grasslands, reflecting similar patterns of vegetation change that coincided with historical contractions of bison ranges in the Northwest. 

The Natural Resources & Environmental Studies Institute (NRESi) at UNBC hosts a weekly lecture series at the Prince George campus. Anyone from the university or wider community with interest in the topic area is welcome to attend. Presentations are also made available to remote participants through Zoom Webinar. Go to http://www.unbc.ca/nres-institute/colloquium-webcasts to view the presentation remotely.

Past NRESi colloquium presentations and special lectures can be viewed on our video archive, available here.