Case Study: Legacy Linear Feature Restoration in Saskatchewan

Like its neighbours to the west, Saskatchewan’s boreal landscape is laced with old roads, and trails, some dating back decades and many with no traceable origin at all. On the western side of the province, seismic lines are common; toward the centre and east, however, old extraction trails and logging roads prevail. Many of them have one thing in common: they are features that nobody is obligated to restore. Typically, these old roads and trails were built before road reclamation requirements were established in the early 2000s.

Without clear industry accountability, the responsibility for these features often falls into a legal gray area. “If the government doesn’t take on the reclamation,” Gazey notes, “it’s unlikely to get done.” The Saskatchewan government had already flagged the Caribou Range Plans as a priority, and 2BT funding gave the province the opportunity to step in as the proponent.

The rationale for restoring linear features is well known among restoration ecologists. These disturbances fragment caribou habitat, act as predator highways by providing open corridors along which wolves and bears can travel faster and farther through dense forest, and increase predation pressure on an already threatened species. The cultural stakes are equally pressing: many First Nations and Métis communities in Saskatchewan have voluntarily suspended caribou hunting as populations declined. The long-term goal of the program, according to Gazey, “is to have a self-sustaining caribou population that can support traditional harvest again.”

The program’s engagement process began long before the initial draft restoration plan was developed. First Nations and Métis communities, various industries, trappers, outfitters, and the general public were involved in the Caribou Range Plans themselves, the original documents that identified linear feature restoration as a habitat management priority. Now that the work is moving to the operational level, those same groups were brought in again, at the local level, before the draft plan was assembled. The goal was to ensure that industry, community and local knowledge about land use and access needs were built into the plan from the outset.

The program’s framing has been consistently one of access consolidation rather than removal. “We’re not getting rid of all the access. We’re trying to consolidate access so that the habitat is less fragmented. We recognize people want and need access to the land, and we’re trying to balance all those things,” Kathleen Gazey says. Consolidation also reflects an operational reality: restored corridors are ecologically sensitive, and every subsequent pass risks damaging planted stock or re-compacting recovering soils.

Recreational users often responded with reluctant acceptance. Consolidating access means change for local land users, but there is general recognition and understanding that caribou recovery is important. The draft plan will be reviewed by these groups before being finalized.

This approach is helpful because the First Nation and Métis communities that help shape the plan are already familiar with the project by the time the duty-to-consult stage rolls around. That way, people are informed, and downstream delays are less likely. The province is also looking at opportunities to engage local communities in the project at both the planning and implementation stages, with a focus on providing training and creating economic opportunities.

In addition to navigating stakeholder and Rightsholder engagement, linear feature restoration presents logistical challenges with no parallel in conventional tree planting operations. These aren’t your traditional cut blocks: the features being restored are often the same trails that would otherwise provide access to a work area. Once ripping, mounding, and tree bending have been completed along a stretch of old trail, that trail is no longer passable. A substantial portion of planting access will need to be by helicopter—not just for site entry, but to keep planting crews continuously supplied with seedlings as they work their way out from the far end of a line. These costs need to be built into program budgets from the outset.

Safety is another consideration. Some of the things Kathleen Gazey is thinking about:  heavy equipment, remote boreal terrain, winter conditions, trails of unknown structural integrity, machines spread across a line with no easy convergence point at the end of the day. Questions like “How many machines work together? How far apart? Where do you put the fuel cache when the trails don’t meet? are constantly being considered and are addressed in the final operational plan. The challenges will be tackled with the project management contractor before operations begin, rather than left to be resolved in the field.

One of the most valuable assets the program has developed is access to a growing network of practitioners working on similar projects. Through the Reforest Canada Collective and the Northern Boreal Caribou Knowledge Consortium (NBCKC), the program has had meaningful exchanges with counterparts in Manitoba, Alberta, B.C., and the Northwest Territories.

“I really appreciate how generous people have been in sharing their experience,” she says.

Jesse Tigner of Swamp Donkey Solutions, a contractor with extensive linear feature restoration experience in Alberta, has been a particularly valuable resource. He has shared operational knowledge about equipment, winter conditions, and safety that would otherwise have taken years to accumulate.

Likewise, Katherine Wolfenden of Fort Nelson First Nation, whose program Kathleen Gazey encountered at an NBCKC meeting in Edmonton, has been equally influential. “I got to meet her last spring and was impressed with what they’ve accomplished in terms of restoration, the knowledge they have and what they're developing,” Kathleen Gazey recalls. For someone building a program from scratch, that kind of access to fourteen years of accumulated field experience is, as she puts it, invaluable.

Seedling orders are finalized for the pilot project area, procurement for a project management contractor is underway, and the operational restoration plan for the first pilot area is approaching its final stage. Planting seasons are scheduled from 2027 for the pilot project and through 2030 for subsequent project areas, with a potential program total of up to 500,000 seedlings across the SK2 Caribou Conservation Area.

Beyond Saskatchewan’s 2BT funding window, which ends in 2031, the province has developed a mitigation and offset program to address industry development in caribou habitat. Industrial proponents disturbing caribou habitat will either restore the impacted landscape or contribute to the mitigation and offset fund for work to be carried out.

Lessons learned through initial habitat restoration projects will be helpful as the province undertakes additional restoration projects. Although trees aren’t in the ground yet, the program has laid the ecological, logistical, regulatory, and relational groundwork to ensure project success. For organizations in a similar position, Saskatchewan’s experience shows that the quality of the work done beforehand plays a key role in project success and that execution cannot occur without proper and thorough planning. And each new project provides opportunities to learn and improve.