The Journal of Wildlife Management

One of the most challenging tasks in wildlife conservation and management is to clarify how spatial variation in land cover due to anthropogenic disturbance influences wildlife demography and long‐ term viability. To evaluate this, we compared rates of survival and population growth by woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) from 2 study sites in northern Ontario, Canada that differed in the degree of anthropogenic disturbance because of commercial logging and road development, resulting in differences in predation risk due to gray wolves (Canis lupus). We used an individual‐based model for population viability analysis (PVA) that incorporated adaptive patterns of caribou movement in relation to predation risk and food availability to predict stochastic variation in rates of caribou survival. Field estimates of annual survival rates for adult female caribou in the unlogged (x̄ = 0.90) and logged (x̄ = 0.76) study sites recorded during 2010–2014 did not differ significantly (P> 0.05) from values predicted by the individual‐based PVA model (unlogged: x̄ = 0.87; logged: x̄ = 0.79). Outcomes from the individual‐based PVA model and a simpler stage‐structured matrix model suggest that substantial differences in adult survival largely due to wolf predation are likely to lead to long‐term decline of woodland caribou in the commercially logged landscape, whereas the unlogged landscape should be considerably more capable of sustaining caribou. Estimates of population growth rates (λ) for the 2010–2014 period differed little between the matrix model and the individual‐based PVA model for the unlogged (matrix model x̄ = 1.01; individual‐based model x̄ = 0.98) and logged landscape (matrix model x̄ = 0.88; individual‐based model x̄ = 0.89). We applied the spatially explicit PVA model to assess the viability of woodland caribou across 14 woodland caribou ranges in Ontario. Outcomes of these simulations suggest that woodland caribou ranges that have experienced This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. Received: 21 February 2019; Accepted: 22 December 2019 E‐mail: jfryxell@uoguelph.ca Current affiliation: Department of Wildland Resources, Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322, USA Current affiliation: CBS Biology Teaching/Learning, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Room 3‐133 MCB, 420 Washington Ave SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA Current affiliation: Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture, Mississippi State University, Box 9690, Mississippi State, MS 39762‐9690, USA Fryxell et al. • Population Viability of Woodland Caribou 1 significant levels of commercial forestry activities in the past had annual growth rates <0.89, whereas caribou ranges that had not experienced commercial forestry operations had population growth rates >0.96. These differences were strongly related to regional variation in wolf densities. Our results suggest that increased wolf predation risk due to anthropogenic disturbance is of sufficient magnitude to cause appreciable risk of population decline in woodland caribou in Ontario. © 2020 The Authors. The Journal of Wildlife Management published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of The Wildlife Society.