Caribou on the Brink

Once unimaginably abundant, this “umbrella species” is at tremendous risk. What we do now and for the next few years will either save or doom this extraordinary creature

Once unimaginably abundant, this “umbrella species” is at tremendous risk. What we do now and for the next few years will either save or doom this extraordinary creature

THE STORY OF CARIBOU IS THE STORY OF US. SOME 35,000 years ago, as early modern humans struggled to eke out an existence in Europe, it was reindeer — as caribou are known there — that sustained us. Archeological digs show refuse heaps dating from that time made up almost entirely of reindeer bones. Between 12,000 and 17,000 years ago, caribou was such an important prey animal in Europe that archeologists call it the “Reindeer Epoch.” Closer to home, natural cycles of abundance and scarcity in the George River and Leaf River herds in what is now northern Labrador and Quebec led to periodic starvation among the Innu, the Cree and the Inuit.

Today, caribou (Rangifer tarandus) are still essential for many northern Indigenous peoples, and not only as a source of food and clothing. Caribou play a central role in their creation stories, values and relationships with the land, and have done so for at least 12,000 years, dating back to when the glaciers retreated from North America. They are “very deep in the psyche,” says John B. Zoe, a member of the Tłįcho First Nation. “Our language and our way of life are all based on the caribou.”

But with the precipitous decline of caribou across the country, that way of life is under threat. The Barren-ground caribou that make up the Bathurst herd where Zoe lives in the Northwest Territories declined from a modern-day high of roughly 450,000 in the mid-1980s to a low of about 18,000 today. Over the same period, the Indigenous harvest of that herd went from 14,000 animals in the ’80s to 300 in 2010 to essentially none today.

“One of the things the decline of caribou does is it draws people away from the land,” says Zoe, who works as a senior advisor to the Tłįcho government. “We need to encourage people to follow the old trails — not necessarily for harvesting, but for awareness.”

Anne Gunn, a caribou biologist who has spent more than three decades working with northern people and caribou, echoes his concern: “I can’t imagine what a loss of culture that must mean to kids growing up now. They have the most to lose,” she says.

Gunn, who worked first with the Canadian Wildlife Service and then with the government of Northwest Territories, is now semi-retired. She remembers keenly the feeling of being suddenly surrounded by thousands of caribou: “You hear something, and sometimes you actually smell something, and then they are all around you. The landscape comes alive. You have a 360-view of moving bodies. And that’s gone,” she says. “I think as a biologist, if I were to fly over the empty tundra now, it would break my heart.”

But most of us who live in southern Canada are not as invested as Gunn and Zoe. We are now so far from caribou country that we no longer need them. Or do we? “My view is we are more connected to caribou than ever,” says Jim Schaefer, a Trent University biologist who has studied them for more than three decades. “If we still have caribou at the end of this century, I’d be confident we’d solved a whole bunch of issues, not just the caribou conservation issue.”

What Schaefer means is that caribou are an “umbrella species.” They are selected for making conservationrelated decisions, typically because protecting them indirectly protects many other species that are part of the same ecosystem.

In the North for example, caribou are the centre of the food web. Among the largest and most abundant land mammal, they are prey for wolves, bears and other species that scavenge their carcasses. Caribou droppings are also essential for nutrient-poor northern soils. Cold temperatures mean decomposing plants take a long time to return nitrogen, carbon and phosphorus to the earth. But as caribou graze, their digestive systems efficiently break down plant matter. One animal can defecate up to 25 times a day, dropping more than 220 kilograms of pellets per year, an important source of key nutrients for the soil.

Caribou are also central to life in northern lakes. They are a significant source of blood for breeding mosquitoes, without which the insects could not produce eggs. This is important because mosquito larvae feed on tiny algae and plankton and the larvae in turn feed fish and birds.

Caribou that live further south, in the boreal forest and in the mountains, are no less an umbrella species than their northern kin. They prefer forests that are at least half a century old, habitat that suits many other plants and animals. While most don’t migrate the way caribou in the North do, they still need large landscapes to spread out and minimize the risk of wolves and bears killing their calves. The typical density of boreal caribou is about one animal per 16 square kilometres.

“Caribou demand a big view,” says Schaefer. “This is not in keeping with our notion of 20 years being a long-term plan. We will not understand conservation of this animal until we scale up,” both in time-scale and geography.

The bottom line, say caribou biologists, is that in places where healthy caribou populations exist, the land is probably

also healthy, providing ecosystem services such as clean air and water, food and fuel — essential to life, including ours.

But here is the problem: most caribou populations are not healthy. The animal that graces our 25-cent coin was once one of Canada’s most widespread wildlife species, found in over 80 per cent of the country. It ranged from Newfoundland and the Atlantic provinces to Haida Gwaii in British Columbia and from southern Alberta to Ellesmere Island in Nunavut.

Today, their numbers and their range are significantly smaller. At least one population is extinct: the Dawson caribou, a small, pale animal that was last seen in the 1930s on Haida Gwaii, an archipelago off British Columbia. Other populations are fast heading in that direction. Quebec’s Val d’or herd for example numbers just 18 animals, and Alberta’s Little Smoky herd is no healthier.

Widen the lens, and the view is just as disturbing. In Alberta, caribou no longer roam in about 60 per cent of their historical range. They are also gone from 40 per cent of their British Columbia range. In Ontario, half of their boreal forest home has been lost to industry and development. In Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut, they still lay claim to much of their original habitat. The problem there is not their territory so much as it is their numbers. Many herds have declined by 80 to 90 per cent over the past decade.

CARIBOU ARE ONE OF SEVERAL MEMBERS OF THE deer family, along with moose and elk. They are generally smaller, though, and are unique in that both males and females sport antlers. Most adults have dark brown fur with lighter patches around the neck and rump, and white above each hoof. And as anyone who has stood close to a caribou can tell you, they produce a distinct clicking sound as they walk, which comes from tendons slipping over foot bones.

Like their moose and deer cousins, they eat grasses, sedges, birch and willow leaves and mosses. But unlike the others, they also eat lichen, which means they can survive at high elevations and on the tundra.

Biologists divide caribou into three rough ecotypes based on their preferred terrain: migratory tundra, boreal forest and mountain caribou. While all three are the same species and can interbreed, they each have different lifestyles, often referred to as “spacing out” and “herding up,” which are responses to predators — losing themselves in the landscape or in the herd.

Tundra caribou, for example, live in herds tens of thousands strong and undertake one of the longest land migrations of any mammal, trekking hundreds, even thousands of kilometres across frozen ice sheets to spring calving grounds. Their numbers fluctuate on a natural cycle of roughly 40 years, linked to changes in weather, food availability and insect harassment.

Boreal and mountain caribou don’t have the same natural population swings. Their lifestyle is also different. They lead largely sedentary lives in smaller groups. Boreal females usually calve alone, often on relatively protected islands or in muskegs, while pregnant mountain caribou head to higher elevations.

Threats are different for each ecotype. The drop in migratory caribou numbers may be the most difficult to untangle because herds typically cycle from high to low numbers. As Gunn says, this can leave the impression that when numbers are low, they will bounce back as they always have.