Canadian Wildlife Federation

Vessel-whale collisions are one of the major threats that large whales face worldwide. The probability of lethal injury is an important factor to consider when conducting vessel strike risk assessment, which helps identify areas most at risk. To calculate the probability of lethality, these assessments have commonly used published models, which only account for the vessel speed. A biophysical model has been developed to simulate a vessel strike and estimate a probability of lethality, better accounting for the multiple parameters involved in the interaction, such as whale morphology, vessel dimensions, as well as speed. While the biophysical model is likely to provide more accurate estimates of lethality, some of the parameters required in the model input are not readily accessible, particularly a vessel's displacement (i.e., its total mass). To facilitate the use of the biophysical model for all users, our objective was to compute vessel-type-specific equations to convert a vessel's length overall to an estimated displacement. We collected the characteristics from n = 873 vessels, including vessel length overall, maximum deadweight tonnage, and total displacement when available. Vessel data was collected from Automatic Information System static data and other sources, and represented twelve vessel types. We computed a linear regression to test the correlation between the log of vessel length and the log of displacement, by vessel type. The model was significant (p < 0.001, R2 = 0.978) and each vessel type was significantly different from at least one other vessel type. We demonstrated that these equations can then be used to compute the probability of lethality of a vessel strike with the biophysical model and obtain an estimate factored by vessel size. This can be an important tool for risk assessments and can better inform management and conservation measures for large whales.

ABSTRACTForaging behaviour plays a fundamental role in animal fitness and population dynamics., particularly for central‐place foragers like breeding seabirds. Among Procellariiform seabirds, petrels exhibit a wide range of foraging strategies finely tuned to the patchy and unpredictable distribution of resources. The extent and remote nature of their foraging grounds makes direct observation of foraging behaviour impractical, thereby requiring the use of remote tracking technologies. We deployed miniaturised multi‐sensor biologgers and collected fine scale movement data to investigate the at‐sea behaviours of the Bermuda petrel Pterodroma cahow, a poorly studied and highly threatened gadfly petrel, specialised on mesopelagic prey. GPS‐tracking data revealed extensive foraging trips (mean ± SD: 1207 ± 305 km), in consistent directions, over remote oceanic regions. Time‐depth‐recorders provided new insights into Bermuda petrel feeding techniques suggesting that the meso‐bathypelagic prey targeted by petrels must be available in the very upper layer of the water surface, given their very limited diving activity (maximum dive depth of 1.57 m). We identified three flight‐related and three water‐associated behaviours using supervised classification approach to classify behaviour from tri‐axial acceleromtetry. Flying behaviours reflected the expected dynamic soaring flight strategy of Procellariiformes; individuals spent more than 75% of their time in flight (dynamic soaring and flap‐gliding) with dynamic soaring flight being the most common behaviour under all conditions. The behaviour classified as ‘Intensive flight’ was infrequently observed but could indicate aerial dipping, a characteristic foraging technique of Pterodroma species. The remaining time was spent in three water behaviours: active, inactive and intensive, with the latter being less common but thought to reflect scavenging and prey seizing. Flight increased during dusk and in the night, highlighting greater flight activity during night compared to the day, while water behaviours were more common during the day. While some of our findings may require further validation to confirm their relevance to foraging behaviour, our work offers new and valuable insights to consider when assessing the ecological needs of this endangered species and its potential vulnerability to offshore anthropogenic activities.

ABSTRACT Space‐based detection of whales is proliferating because it shows promise as a monitoring tool, yet tests of its application across taxa and environments are rare. The objective of this study was to develop an end‐to‐end, semi‐automated procedure for detecting two right whale species ( Eubalaena glacialis and E. australis ) in satellite imagery. We collected 35 new and archived images covering 5200 km 2 of ocean in three habitat types from various areas around the globe, then constructed and tested an EfficientNet model classifier and a Faster Region‐Based Convolutional Neural Network detection model to process the imagery. The model was trained using 428 large whales manually detected in 18 images. The test set included 119 large whales found in 5 images collected within right whale habitats that were not included in the training set. The model produced strong recall at detecting whales (&gt; 0.73). Precision was lower in northern temperate E. glacialis habitat (0.11–0.20) than in coastal tropical E. australis habitat (0.84–0.95). Satellite tasking, detection, and species‐level identification efforts were more successful in coastal than in open‐ocean habitats. The end‐to‐end procedure was effective at detecting large whales in satellite imagery. Moving forward, responsive tasking options and the high price of imagery are challenges to scaling up this procedure for operational monitoring.

BackgroundNational legislative guidelines for sleep and rest are lacking in the Canadian licensed childcare sector. No review of Canadian legislation for licensed childcare facilities has focused on sleep. This paper provides a review of the Canadian provincial and territorial legislative landscape, regarding sleep, rest, and naps in licensed childcare centers.MethodsChildcare statutes and regulations for each province and territory were identified and downloaded on a particular date. Statutes and regulations were reviewed focusing on sections articulating licensed childcare facility mandates governing sleep, rest, naps, and sleep equipment. An excel file was used to facilitate systematic data retrieval and comparisons across provinces and territories. Two authors developed and discussed themes that summarized data from the documents.ResultsNo statutes indicated recommendations for sleep, rest, or naps. Only one regulation defined rest (Alberta). Our analysis of regulations identified four themes representing sleep, rest, and naps: programming (general programming, daily programming); space (dedicated space, amount of space, age-specific space); equipment (developmental appropriateness, acceptable sleep equipment, age-specific equipment); and safety (staffing during sleep/rest, sleep position, sleep monitoring, sleep equipment safety, prohibited practices). In Canada, minimal regulatory consistency is evident in required sleep programming, space, acceptability of sleep equipment, and sleep safety considerations. Most jurisdictions’ regulations indicated necessity for developmentally appropriate rest or sleep areas and equipment, in particular for infants, but there was minimal consistency in defining infant age groups.ConclusionsAlthough we identified themes related to sleep across regulations, childcare regulations differ in their definitions of infants and specifications for children’s sleep and rest in licensed Canadian childcare facilities. Without adequate definitions in legislative components of appropriate sleep duration linked to children’s developmental stages, childcare facilities lack guidance to support healthy sleep for children in their care. Future research can examine translation of healthy sleep guidelines into government legislation and mandates for sleep, rest, and naps among young children in licensed childcare.

Abstract In 2018, Nigeria began the implementation of a cash transfer programme (CCT) for poor and vulnerable people. We evaluated the impact of cash transfer on household livelihood outcomes in Nigeria. Using multistage cluster sampling methodology, beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries within the same locality were randomly selected to participate in a survey to assess the impact of cash transfer on food security and food diversity.When gender, marital status, educational status, and age were controlled, beneficiaries were about three times more likely than non-beneficiaries to report experiencing little or no hunger. Children 0–59 months of beneficiaries were twice likely to have at least three meals a day compared to children of non-beneficiaries. Difference in differences regression analysis showed that on the average, beneficiaries of the cash transfer significantly consumed more diverse food than non-beneficiaries. Beneficiaries of the CCT experienced fewer episodes of severe hunger, have more meal frequency, and higher household dietary diversity than non-beneficiaries. This shows that the CCT programme is effective and can directly mitigate adverse effects of malnutrition with its long-term negative impact on children and thus must be expanded to more vulnerable people across all states in Nigeria.

Freshwater turtles face many threats but roadkill is one of the most serious for many species. Roadkill of turtles is not uniformly distributed across roads but aggregated in certain areas, termed hotspots. A key question in identifying hotspots is whether they are fixed locations or if they shift from year to year because of changes in movement patterns. We compared how one, two, and three years of road survey data compared with the pooled data from four years of surveys. We found 254 turtles during 73 surveys during four years along a 15.5 km road section in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The four years of pooled data produced four hotspots (“pooled hotspots”) while each year or combination of years produced from three to five hotspots, four of which approximately corresponded to the pooled hotspots. The average percentage overlap of hotspots between one, two, or three years of survey data and the pooled hotspots ranged from 58.7% to 88.9%. Just one year of surveys sometimes missed one of the pooled hotspots, underestimated the spatial extent of the pooled hotspots, and also sometimes produced an additional “temporary” hotspot. Two years of surveys generally produced better approximations of the pooled hotspots and better identified the spatial extent of those hotspots.

Chinook salmon ( Oncorhynchus tshawytscha (Walbaum, 1792)) from the upper Yukon River are highly unique, with some populations migrating nearly 3000 km to spawning habitat near the northern range limit for the species. We conducted a 4-year study to understand the behaviour of Chinook salmon in the terminal reaches of their migration by tagging salmon with acoustic and radio transmitters in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada, ∼2800 km from the ocean. Various migration characteristics were quantified for Chinook salmon, including en route mortality, diel behaviour, migration rates, and homing patterns, and associations with salmon origin (wild vs. hatchery), sex, size, and migration timing were explored. Salmon had high survival to spawning grounds (&gt;98%) and migrated throughout all hours of the day, with higher proportions of nighttime movements in a smaller spawning tributary than in the Yukon River mainstem. Migration rates were faster for larger salmon as well as late-arriving salmon, which was likely necessary to ensure they had sufficient time and suitable conditions on spawning grounds to reproduce. Non-direct homing movements (e.g., tributary exploration) were more common in male salmon and considerably increased migration distance through the study area. Findings from this study may help to inform the complex international and inter-nation management of these increasingly threatened Chinook salmon populations.

American Eel (Anguilla rostrata) were used as a case study to assess whether Ontario’s Endangered Species Act proponent-driven regulatory approach resulted in successful imperilled species management outcomes. American Eel observation databases and proponent-prepared mitigation plans and monitoring data were used to assess whether: ( i) facilities within the distribution range were registered, ( ii) effects monitoring protocols were adequate to evaluate adverse effects of facilities, ( iii) proponents implemented mitigation actions that followed best management practices (BMPs), and ( iv) effectiveness monitoring designs were adequate to evaluate effectiveness of mitigation actions. Less than half of the facilities (8 of 17) within the extant species range were registered. Few eels were observed at each facility, precluding proponents from effectively evaluating the facilities’ effects. Mitigation actions following BMPs were only implemented for eel out-migration at three facilities. Half of the registered facilities implemented effectiveness monitoring, but experimental designs did not follow best practices and standards. To improve this proponent-driven approach, regulators could reduce ambiguity in regulation language and provide clearer, quantitative requirements for facility registration, effects monitoring, mitigation actions, and effectiveness monitoring. Proponents could improve monitoring efforts to establish species occurrence and generate baseline data to measure facility effects and mitigation action effectiveness.

Abstract Time-area closures are increasingly used to mitigate cetacean entanglement by temporarily excluding fishing effort from areas where high densities of cetaceans and fishing overlap. The effort displaced by these closures can be redistributed to the areas that remain open, changing the distribution and density of fishing effort outside the closures. These patterns were evaluated for the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence snow crab fishery by comparing recent years (2015–2017) with 2018 when time-area closures were implemented to protect North Atlantic right whales. A predictive model framework was created to test how well we could predict the response of fishers to closures. Approximately 29% of the total fishing effort was displaced by the 2018 closures, increasing effort density outside the closures by 41%. Displaced fishing effort shifted farther from the closures than predicted, into areas which, prior to 2018, had low effort density, producing a higher threat of entanglement in these new areas. Fishing effort in 2018 remained as high as 2017, despite a lower quota and reduced trap limit. Consequently, the resulting effects of time-area closures on fishing patterns outside of the closures cannot be discounted if entanglement threat to whales is to be successfully mitigated.