Caribou declines could lead to federal measures
Oil and gas development, forestry may halt if B.C. doesn’t increase protections
Unless B.C. acts to protect more critical habitat for rapidly failing southern mountain caribou herds, the federal government could step in to curtail oil and gas development, forestry and recreation access to the backcountry.
“The conservation of woodland caribou is North America’s biggest terrestrial conservation challenge,” said Robert Serrouya, director of the Caribou Monitoring Unit at the University of Alberta.
“Their core critical habitat overlaps with billions of dollars of oil resources and hundreds of millions in wood resources.”
Ten populations of caribou ranging roughly from Quesnel to the southeast Kootenays are facing “imminent threats” to recovery, according to a declaration by federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna.
The federal plan obligates B.C. to protect 65 per cent of their critical habitat as “undisturbed.”
The provincial government last year announced a $27-million caribou recovery program, which includes habitat restoration, predator management and maternity protection programs. B.C. has also set aside 22,000 square kilometres of winter habitat for southern mountain herds.
The provincial government is also doing a round of consultations with First Nations, conservation groups and industry to fine-tune its plan.
But industrial development is generally incompatible with the survival of the caribou, said Serrouya, who is an adviser to a caribou recovery program based in Revelstoke, B.C.
“No other conservation issue matches the potential conflict between economics and a species,” he said. “If B.C.’s efforts fall short, the federal government in theory could step in and further curtail activity on these lands, both industrial and recreational.”
McKenna’s declaration suggests a rare level of urgency, said Jesse Zeman, a spokesman for the B.C. Wildlife Federation.
“If the critical habitat net were to cover summer and fall range, the impact of that (on industry) will be very significant,” he said.
“But I find Ottawa’s position a bit disingenuous because the caribou inside national parks — which they are responsible for — aren’t doing any better than those outside the parks.”
Five caribou herds in B.C. have perished in recent years and another 45 are known to be in decline. Last month, the southern Selkirk herd was declared functionally extinct with just three females left alive.
A handful of herds are stable or increasing, in particular the Klinse-Za herd in northern B.C. and the Columbia North herd in Revelstoke, with both recovery programs employing a multipronged approach that includes penning pregnant caribou cows to protect them from predators.
Roads for oil and gas development, forestry and even cuts for power lines act as “predator superhighways” for wolves and cougars.
Furthermore, logging is a double whammy for caribou, reducing an important food source — lichen on old-growth trees — and creating an environment that encourages the growth of prey species such as moose and deer, said Serrouya.
Abundant prey encourages massive growth in wolf and cougar populations.
The Revelstoke project has employed multiple strategies simultaneously — maternity protection, wolf culls, moose and deer control, restricted recreation access and habitat restoration — and may be a template for herds in decline.
“The amount of protection given the caribou in a working landscape (there) is unprecedented,” he said. “It gives us a glimmer of hope.”
However, most of the southern mountain herds may already be too small to recover given the level of disturbance in their habitat, said Stan Boutin, a U of A professor and biodiversity conservation chair.