Fig 1.
Eastern Banff National Park area that is being considered for plains bison (Bison bison bison) reintroduction.
Within the primary reintroduction area, we evaluated 4 secondary areas: Red deer, Panther-Dormer, Cascade and Fairholme.
Fig 2.
Conceptual diagram for development of a Habitat Suitability Index model and estimating carry capacity for potential plains bison (Bison bison bison) reintroduction.
Fig 3.
Potential plains bison (Bison bison bison) habitat suitability as a function of a) snow depth b) slope and c) distance to water during winter and summer in Banff National Park based on a literature review of previous studies.
Table 1.
Plains bison (Bison bison bison) habitat suitability (from 0, low to 1, high) for landcover types for winter and summer in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada, based on standardized rankings for homologous landcover types from previous published studies on bison habitat use.
Table 2.
Potential energetic requirements for plains bison (Bison bison bison) in Banff National Park, as a function of age structure, body mass, and % daily intake rates available in literature.
Fig 4.
Predicted plains bison (Bison bison bison) Habitat Suitability Index (HSI, low of 1 to a high of 10) in the primary reintroduction and secondary areas of Banff National Park.
Left panel is HSI for summer, right panel for a medium snow-depth winter (using snow data from 2011).
Table 3.
Mean Habitat Suitability Index (HSI, low of 1 to a high of 10) values for plains bison (Bison bison bison) habitat during summer, and during 3 different winter scenarios of low, medium and high snow depths in Banff National Park.
Table 4.
Potential plains bison (Bison bison bison) density (bison/km2) during winter in primary reintroduction and secondary areas of Banff National Park under the two grazing intensities (87% and 25% offtake) and three winter severity scenarios.