![\"Ryan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/ryan-fisher-and-jordan-rustad-urban-wildlife-trail-cameras.JPG\")
Ryan Fisher, left, and Jordan Rustad used trail cameras and audio recorders to capture wildlife in and around Regina. (Ethan Williams\/CBC)<\/p>\nResearchers at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum\u00a0have documented hundreds of animals\u00a0in the Regina area as part of an urban wildlife\u00a0project.<\/p>\n
Using 28 monitoring stations\u00a0across the city since the fall of 2021, researchers captured photos and audio recordings of 143 bird species and 15 mammal species.<\/p>\n
Canada geese and white-tailed jackrabbits\u00a0were among the most common species recorded, while the American mink was the rarest species, according to the research project.<\/p>\n
Ryan Fisher, curator of vertebrate\u00a0zoology at the museum, said the project’s goal is to find out how urbanization affects\u00a0wildlife. So far, he said, it hasn’t had much of an impact.<\/p>\n
“We have a lot of green space for a city our size,” said Fisher. “We’ve got\u00a0this lovely corridor that kind of goes from northwest Regina to southeast Regina.”<\/p>\n
Ryan Fisher, left, and Jordan Rustad used trail cameras and audio recorders to capture wildlife in and around Regina. (Ethan Williams\/CBC)<\/p>\n
Fisher said many species were found in suburban areas \u2014 where there are both natural habitats and human-made infrastructure\u00a0\u2014 including many birds. Moose were also detected on the fringes of the city.<\/p>\n
The museum’s research comes on the heels of a study<\/a>\u00a0that indicated\u00a0moose are becoming more common around Saskatoon.<\/p>\n Katie\u00a0Harris, a PhD candidate in animal and poultry science at the University of Saskatchewan and co-author of the study, said her monitoring stations recorded 60 moose within the city boundaries between\u00a0September 2020 and September 2023. The number rose from eight moose in the first year of the study\u00a0to 29 in the third year.<\/p>\n Harris points to one notable incident in 2021, when a moose crashed through the window of Sylvia Fedoruk School<\/a>, as an example of increasing interactions between humans and moose in urban settings.<\/p>\n Harris isn’t exactly sure why there’s an increase, but thinks green spaces play a role.<\/p>\n “We do all sorts of things to our [green] spaces in cities that you wouldn’t see, typically, outside of a city in a natural area,” some of which may attract wildlife, said Harris.\u00a0<\/p>\n “If you can get an area with an all-you-can-eat buffet versus an area that is single-time dining, you’re going to go to the all-you-can-eat buffet.”<\/p>\n Climate change could increase\u00a0urban wildlife<\/p>\n Cities across Canada could see hundreds of new species of animals by the year 2100, according to a recent study<\/a>\u00a0co-authored by Alex Filazzola, a data scientist who teaches biology at Western University.<\/p>\n While there is no specific data for Saskatchewan cities,\u00a0Filazzola’s study suggested\u00a0even under a low-emission scenario, climate change could drive over 150 more species\u00a0into Winnipeg, while only about 30 species would leave that urban area.<\/p>\n “There’s a particular niche of variables that\u00a0\u2026 [determine] where [an]\u00a0animal can live,” he said. “So if that niche changes as a result of climate change … we would expect the animal to move.”<\/p>\n Cities on the Prairies are often warmer than surrounding rural areas,\u00a0Filazzola\u00a0said,\u00a0which could lead to longer growing seasons, providing a home for more cold-sensitive animals.<\/p>\n Filazzola said some species are already\u00a0beginning to show up in cities across the country\u00a0where they haven’t previously been seen, such as ticks. Prairie cities could even see an influx of different types of reptiles, he said.<\/p>\n Jordan Rustad, one of the researchers on the Royal Saskatchewan Museum’s\u00a0project, said another\u00a0goal of the research is to find out how cities can be better designed to allow wildlife and humans to coexist.<\/p>\n Rustad, who also\u00a0chairs\u00a0the\u00a0Bird Friendly Regina committee<\/a>,\u00a0said the\u00a0research\u00a0found many free-roaming cats in Wascana Park. Cats\u00a0are a major threat to birds, causing more\u00a0bird deaths than other threats,\u00a0according to Birds Canada<\/a>.<\/p>\n Rustad said\u00a0people can help by keeping their cats indoors or supervising them outside.<\/p>\n The U of Saskatchewan’s Harris said having green spaces is also essential to allow wildlife to thrive in cities.<\/p>\n That means “not just having a patch of lawn that has nothing else on it,”\u00a0she said, “but\u00a0having spaces that have trees, shrubs, grasses, different types of plants.”<\/p>\n “If we put our priority onto not just preserving the green spaces that we have, but improving ones that aren’t very good to start with, that’s a huge key factor.”<\/p>\n Cities can add wildlife-friendly fencing to keep animals out of certain areas without harming them, as well as\u00a0light bulbs that don’t cause\u00a0as much light pollution, she said. That could help certain birds and bats who thrive in darker spaces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Researchers at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum\u00a0have documented hundreds of animals\u00a0in the Regina area as part of an urban…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-144725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/saskatoon-moose-on-trail-camera.JPG\")
A moose walks past a trail camera in Saskatoon. Katie Harris, a PhD candidate in animal and poultry science at the University of Saskatchewan, found an increase in moose in the city during the three years of her study. (Submitted by Katie Harris)<\/p>\n![\"black-legged](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/black-legged-ticks-known-to-carry-lyme-disease.JPG\")
Alex Filazzola, a data scientist who teaches biology at Western University, says the occurrence of ticks could increase in cities as the climate changes. (Travis Reddaway\/CBC)<\/p>\n