Landscape change is a driver of global biodiversity loss. In the western Nearctic, petroleum exploration and extraction is a major contributor to landscape change, with concomitant effects on large mammal populations. One of those effects is the continued expansion of invasive white‐tailed deer populations into the boreal forest, with ramifications for the whole ecosystem. We explored deer resource selection within the oil sands region of the boreal forest using a novel application of aerial ungulate survey (AUS) data. Deer locations from AUS were “used” points and together with randomly allocated “available” points informed deer resource selection in relation to landscape variables in the boreal forest. We created a candidate set of generalized linear models representing competing hypotheses about the role of natural landscape features, forest harvesting, cultivation, roads, and petroleum features. We ranked these in an information‐theoretic framework. A combination of natural and anthropogenic landscape features best explained deer resource selection. Deer strongly selected seismic lines and other linear features associated with petroleum exploration and extraction, likely as movement corridors and resource subsidies. Forest harvesting and cultivation, important contributors to expansion in other parts of the white‐tailed deer range, were not as important here. Stemming deer expansion to conserve native ungulates and maintain key predator–prey processes will likely require landscape management to restore the widespread linear features crossing the vast oil sands region.

The resource extraction that powers global economies is often manifested in Indigenous Peoples’ territories. Indigenous Peoples living on the land are careful observers of resulting biodiversity changes, and Indigenous-led research can provide evidence to inform conservation decisions. In the Nearctic western boreal forest, landscape change from forest harvesting and petroleum extraction is intensive and extensive. A First Nations community in the Canadian oil sands co-created camera-trap research to explore observations of presumptive species declines, seeking to identify the relative contributions of different industrial sectors to changes in mammal distributions. Camera data were analyzed via generalized linear models in a model-selection approach. Multiple forestry and petroleum extraction features positively and negatively affected boreal mammal species. Pipelines had the greatest negative effect size (for wolves), whereas well sites had a large positive effect size for multiple species, suggesting the energy sector as a target for co-management. Co-created research reveals spatial relationships of disturbance, prey, and predators on Indigenous traditional territories. It provides hypotheses, tests, and interpretations unique to outside perspectives; Indigenous participation in conservation management of their territories scales up to benefit global biodiversity conservation.

The global urban population is expected to increase by 2.5 billion people over the next 30 years. Yet the doubling of urban landscapes in the last decades have already led to habitat loss and concomitant impacts to biodiversity. Nonetheless urban landscapes remain important for wildlife, and global syntheses have revealed that wealthy urban areas house more biodiversity, a ‘luxury effect’. We researched some of the mechanisms for the luxury effect for urban black-tailed deer, a species of increasing concern in urban landscapes across the northwestern Nearctic. We satellite collared twenty deer in an urban landscape in British Columbia, Canada, with high-resolution fix rates. We used generalized models in an information-theoretic framework to weigh evidence for competing hypotheses about the role of tree cover, productivity, public green spaces, and wealth in explaining deer selection. Wealth, manifesting as housing lot size, emerged as the dominant predictor of deer space-use, which is highly concentrated into very small home-ranges. Other landscape elements stemming from affluence, including golf courses and parklands, were also strongly selected by deer. We show post-colonization landscape conversion from dry semi-arid savannah to well-watered high-productivity landscapes is supporting deer, with ramifications for the rest of the biotic community. With urban landscapes becoming an increasingly important for biodiversity conservation, understanding these mechanisms can help to promote wildlife-human coexistence.