Few Canadians have seen a wild caribou. This Canadian emblem has been on a historical decline, but conservation efforts are attempting to change the fate of the species.
BC is home to the Southern Mountain, Northern Mountain and Boreal caribou populations. But, all groups have declined, according to research on long-term historic population trends. Today, even many British Columbians living in the Cariboo regional district — a region previously abundant in caribou — have never seen a caribou. Dr. Clayton Lamb, a wildlife scientist and postdoctoral fellow at UBCO, is researching the decline in population and caribou conservation efforts.
Loss of habitat and decline
Caribou are sensitive to changes in their environment, explained Lamb, adding that “the reason for caribou decline is habitat that is not working for caribou.”
Ideal caribou habitat is vast, intact and has low predator density. According to Lamb, in BC, that is becoming increasingly hard to find.
“It’s been declining rapidly over the last 30 or 40 years at least, and to the point that we've actually lost quite a bit of the distribution of caribou within British Columbia, to the point that the southern range margin of Southern Mountain caribou has retracted by hundreds of kilometres in the last 10 years.”
The logging industry is the principal force of change as it modifies the landscape by removing trees and creates forestry roads.
However, these logging industry actions don’t have a direct impact on the caribou. Rather, Lamb explained they create conditions that allow predation of the caribou by facilitating the entry of moose and deer to the area. The arrival of moose and deer is quickly followed by wolves.
“Those wolves end up predating on caribou at unstable rates and cause declines and eventual extirpation of caribou herds,” said Lamb.
Caribou hooves are designed to walk on snowpack, something that wolves are unable to do, and keeps them safe from predators. But, the animal has little defence against wolves once conditions allow the predators into the environment.
Timeline of conservation effort
Caribou conservation in Western science has had three big eras, according to Lamb. The first focused on gathering information about the natural history species, followed by prioritization on understanding challenges facing the population, and the third and ongoing era is centred around implementing recovery efforts.
“Now, we're in the middle or towards the end of another era which was actually applying a bunch of emergency recovery actions to try to stave off extirpation of this caribou,” said Lamb.
The interim efforts are successful with the population of Southern Mountain caribou rising by 1,500 individuals or 60 per cent over the past 10 to 20 years.
“There's a lot [more] Southern Mountain caribou alive today than there would have been otherwise, which is quite a dramatic increase in a threatened and endangered species,” said Lamb.
Yet, many of the current conservation methods are not sustainable in the long run. They’re expensive and largely based on wolf reduction, a heavy handed and very controversial approach. Instead, Lamb explained the caribou needs habitat-based solutions, but that could take decades to come to fruition.
“Habitat based solutions are kind of the next frontier there and that's kind of the next era of caribou conservation. We've adequately tested what does and doesn't work to keep caribou around in the interim.”
Researchers like Lamb and Indigenous partners are still actively involved in crafting solutions for the caribou population.
He pointed to the partnership between the provincial government and the West Moberly and Saulteau First Nations in northeast BC as exemplary of attempts at a habitat-based solution.
“They secured an area of almost 8,000 square kilometres per caribou, which is bigger than Banff National Park,” said Lamb.
The West Moberly and Saulteau First Nations have been instrumental leading in caribou conservation. They have imposed a voluntary moratorium on hunting caribou, a traditional right they have, managed maternal pens and shared traditional predator-management knowledge.
Caribou conservation in BC doesn’t have a one-stop solution. It’s an uphill battle for conservationists, but Lamb believes it is worth fighting.
“We have examples of landscapes being degraded for caribou and no significant habitat restoration at scale to even know if we can turn the clock back on the disturbance,” said Lamb. “But you might as well try and see what happens.”
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