The search for salt
PREDICTING mineral lick locations from animal movement data
Alpine ungulates like Alberta's provincial mammal, the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, repeatedly consume minerals at sites called "licks" during summer months. These sites are considered important landscape elements for wildlife, and when known, require protection. A large number of lick sites are "known" in the southern mountain areas of Alberta, however, most sites have no confirmed species associations and many of them represent best-guess locations from historic records, or from anecdotal observations. To both confirm species use of "known sites", and predict locations of new (previously unidentified) licks, I used data from 35 collared bighorn rams (males) and Random Forest (RF) models to analyze movements near known lick sites. By selecting a small number of confirmed bighorn sheep licks, and limiting data to summer months and 7:00 am to 7:00 pm, a "training" data set was created that allowed the model to predict 18 locations to investigate for mineral licks used by bighorn sheep.