The location of radiocollar fieldwork is the Central Eastern Slopes area of the Rocky Mountains. This foothill and mountain forest region is in the area surrounding and west of Nordegg, Alberta at Latitude 52.29 N Longitude 116.05 W. The Central Eastern Slopes area is densely forested. However, the region is primarily provincial crown land and therefore supports natural resource use including forest production, trapping and outdoor recreation, and oil and gas well sites.
This temperate coniferous forest area contains a mix of white spruce (Picea glauca), trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides), and lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) with paper birch (Betula papyrifera), balsam poplar (Populus balsamifera), and balsam fir (Abies balsamifera). Lodgepole pine dominates drier locations and black spruce (Picea mariana) occurs in wet locations. Higher elevations contain subalpine forests consisting of lodgpole pine, alpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa), and Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii). The vegetation is a mix between boreal and cordilleran sometimes described as the Montane Cordillera ecozone. The landscape contains steep slopes as well as rolling hills, typical of mountain foothill areas.