THE CARIBOU CATCHERS
AIRBORNE OPERATION RESCUES ‘GHOSTS OF THE WOODS’
On a cloudless day, standing at the north shore of Lake Superior near Wawa, Ont., you can see Michipicoten Island clear enough that the sunset makes it seem the trees are on fire. It’s an observation Serge Couturier, a retired biologist from Quebec City, made during his stay in the area last week, where he spent much of his time pacing around, waiting for good weather.
Couturier, a net-gunner for hire, can catch large animals by shooting nets from helicopters. He was summoned from Quebec last week to assist the Michipicoten First Nation and Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry in their plan to rescue caribou from the wolves that have taken over Michipicoten Island.
Since the 1980s — after the MNRF airlifted in mates to join a lone bull caribou on the island — Michipicoten has become one of the best chances at survival for the threatened woodland caribou species in southern Ontario. The First Nation suspects in three decades the island’s caribou population ballooned from less than 10 to almost 900. The MNRF gives a more conservative estimate of 450.
Both sides agree that population has been devastated by a pack of wolves that crossed to the island on an ice bridge in 2014. Four years later, there are as few as 20 caribou left and almost as many wolves. Unable, and perhaps unwilling, to cull so many wolves quickly, the best option was to pull the caribou out. While it might expedite the wolves’ starvation on the island, it would likely happen naturally anyway, Leo Lepiano, the First Nation’s lands and resource co-ordinator, said this week.
In January, the ministry and the First Nation teamed up to capture nine caribou on Michipicoten and transfer them to the Slate Islands. But the Slate Islands are close to the mainland, within the reach of wolves. So last week, the First Nation called for another mission to bring extra caribou to the more remote (and properly named) Caribou Island as a backup.
The plan was to use one helicopter to find a group of caribou, a second helicopter to capture one in a net fired from a gun and a third larger helicopter to transfer the caribou, without sedatives, to the wolf-free Caribou Island nearby — that is, if they could find any.
“They call them ghosts of the woods,” said Chayse Penno, a commercial fisherman and member of the Michipicoten First Nation, chosen to join the capture team for his proficiency with untangling nets. “They’re so elusive.”
The team didn’t get the weather they needed on Tuesday, nor Wednesday of last week. It needed to be clear, with enough sun casting shadows to make the caribou tracks visible from the air. Stuck on the mainland, Couturier was looking around at all the idle staff and equipment, the spent government resources, and starting to feel a little pressure.
Thursday morning was still overcast and snowing. But by midday, the sun came out and the helicopters took off for the island. They scanned for an hour and didn’t find any live caribou.
At some point Thursday, there was a caribou spine in the snow below — a kill site, in biologist-speak.
“It’s a funny feeling,” said Gord Eason, a retired MNRF biologist who helped with the operation, “to know the ones you’re moving are going to make it and the ones you’re leaving aren’t.”
Eason and the crew in the scout helicopter saw tracks first, then there they were: three female caribou.
The scouts radioed Couturier’s helicopter. When the caribou emerged from the forest, Couturier was in the air above them, sitting on the floor of the helicopter with his net gun — a New Zealand invention that looks like a shotgun with a megaphone fixed on the end. Off to the side, Couturier noticed the scout helicopter and the big transfer helicopter parked with both crews outside watching.
“I was thinking about that,” he recalled. “It’s not the time to miss the shot … It’s important. There’s a lot of people watching. There’s a lot of money.
“At some point in my mind, I said, OK, I’ve done this hundreds of times before … Just focus on the caribou.”
They started running. Couturier directed his pilot to match the speed of the caribou.
“Stay focused on this one,” Couturier told the pilot, pointing to the slow one that was quickly breaking off from the other two.
“OK, go over it,” he said, leaning out of the helicopter doors. The pilot — who’d never done a capture of this sort before — had to nudge the helicopter just in front the running caribou. “Like when we’re shooting ducks: Never shoot the ducks, shoot in front of the ducks,” Couturier said.
He aimed the gun a few yards in front of the caribou and fired. The gun shot a capsule that exploded into a net, fanning out like a sheet over the animal.
“It was a perfect shot,” Couturier said.
It was the first of five successful captures the team carried out last week — four females and one male. Now, the Michipicoten First Nation is calling for the ministry to carry out one final capture, to get a second male for the new herd on Caribou Island to guard against complications from inbreeding.
Marty Blake, the ministry’s director for science and research, said he didn’t think it was a possibility. “We think we’ve enabled that population to persevere,” he said, adding that MNRF had to consider “the fiscal responsibility of government.”