The main drivers of Northern Goshawk population decline are thought to be timber harvesting and large-scale deforestation. Additionally, fire suppression and mountain pine beetle infestations also directly impact the Northern Goshawk (Harrower, Larsen & Stuart-Smith, 2010). The removal and destruction of these forest areas affect laingi nest sites and prey abundance and availability, reducing the potential to find a mate and breed successfully (Moser & Garton, 2019). Goshawk are unable to adapt to urban settings effectively, and therefore rapid land cover change has led to a decline in their numbers (Natsukawa, Mori, Komuro et al., 2020). This raises the importance of forest land cover conservation and management.

Data and Analysis Methodology

This research performs a comparative analysis of the spatial relationship of Northern Goshawk habitat areas to populated areas, roads, and forestry harvest cut-blocks, and analyze the results to determine if the Goshawk is more apprehensive of forestry operations or human populations.

All of the data contained in this research was sourced from the Data BC catalogue and statistics Canada, the data includes: SARA species habitat and critical habitat protection areas, historical record of recent forestry harvest cut-blocks, BC roads (including logging roads and other small road networks), BC dissemination areas with 2016 population statistics ( Joined population statistics with their respective dissemination areas). The wildlife areas had to be filtered by the species common name attribute to isolate the Goshawk habitats. and all other information was filtered to the Vancouver Island and lower mainland areas. This research analyses all of this data using optimized hotspot analysis to analyze the locations of Goshawk habitat in relation to population hot spots and cold spot; it also makes use of generalized linear regression (GLR) to identify the possible spatial correlation between the Goshawk’s habitat and the variables that were previously discussed.