Mountain caribou once roamed the Lower 48. Unhappy with U.S. agency inaction, caribou advocates now depend on Canadian efforts at repopulation
Uncertain air: Female caribou from the North Columbia herd in Revelstoke, B.C. Photo by David Moskowitz/davidmoskowitz.net
By Eli Francovich. October 14, 2021. Early in 2019, with deep snow blanketing British Columbia’s southern Selkirk Mountains, Canadian biologists fired nets from a hovering helicopter and trapped the three remaining mountain caribou that still occasionally roamed into the Lower 48.
Despite decades of effort from U.S., Canadian and tribal officials, that capture marked the extinction of a species (dubbed by some the “Gray Ghosts”) from the Lower 48.
Now, three years later Canadian biologists and tribal leaders are trying to nurse the two remaining Canadian herds back to health despite the triple threat of habitat loss, climate change and predation from wolves and the occasional cougar.
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Meanwhile, U.S. tribes and federal and state agencies are waiting, and hoping, that they might get a second chance at caribou conservation.
“If we get the numbers back up and we have the habitat down here we might be able to relocate the caribou back down here,” says Kevin Robinette, a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife program manager.
On the U.S. side of the border the bulk of that work is being spearheaded by the Kalispel Tribe of Indians in northeast Washington.
“The only hope we have in the U.S. is through Canada,” says tribal biologist Bart George. “We have to build from a source of strength in Canada. Hopefully we can be strong enough partners that when the time comes they will be so inclined to help us restore the population.”
Canadian herds struggling
The Kalispel Tribe is supporting the Canadian-based Arrow Lakes Caribou Society with its maternal penning project, which is constructed and ready to house pregnant cows from the Central Selkirk herd, says George.
But the central herd is also struggling, dropping from 90 animals to 30 in the past seven years according to Canadian biologists. Of documented deaths, 40% have been attributed to wolf predation.
Slim pickings: A member of the Southern Selkirk herd on the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s Darkwoods preserve. Photo by David Moskowitz/davidmoskowitz.net
“Since the removal of the last few animals from the South Selkirk herd, the Central Selkirk’s are the nearest population,” George said in an email. “That group [Arrow Lakes Caribou Society] has been active with the penning project and partnering with the outdoor recreation industry there [primarily heli-skiing] to protect the herd from disruption.
“Meanwhile, the province has been working on cougar and wolf removal in the caribou habitat. The herd has shown a slight increase in population for the last two years. Hopefully, increasing neonatal survival will help move it in the right direction.”
“We’re working hard to secure more habitat but securing more habitat affects industries, especially the forest industry but also the oil and gas industry,” says Leo DeGroot, a wildlife biologist in British Columbia who has worked with caribou for nearly 20 years. “There is huge resistance to protecting more habitat.”
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According to estimates, fewer than 1,400 mountain caribou are left in North America.
The remaining 14 or so herds are all in Canada.
The South Selkirk caribou have ranged throughout the high country along the crest of the Selkirk Mountains near the international border.
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At one point, scientists believe caribou roamed as far south as the Salmon River in Idaho.
In the 1980s their numbers started to decline, as logging in the United States destroyed old-growth habitat.
At the same time, the logging attracted predators. In the aftermath of logging, smaller and younger plants flourish. This attracts deer and elk, which in turn attracts wolves and cougars.
Killing wolves, saving caribou
Mountain caribou, unlike tundra caribou, use their wide feet to walk on top of deep snowpack. This allows them to reach lichen growing high on old-growth trees.
Their primary defense against predators has been avoidance. Those wide feet allow them to traverse snow that’s too deep for predators like wolves to move through.
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But roads built to facilitate logging changed that dynamic. Suddenly wolves were able to access high, mountainous areas previously unreachable, leading to more wolf predation.
In response, Canada started killing wolves in 2014. The backlash was swift. Celebrities, including Miley Cyrus, condemned the killings and drummed up outrage.
But DeGroot says predator control is working.
Each year, government shooters kill between 250 and 400 gray wolves throughout British Columbia. In those areas caribou herds seem to be doing better.
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“Where we’re seeing increases is where we’re taking wolves out,” says DeGroot. “But we see that as only a short-term solution. It’s not very palatable to many people and it’s not a way to go for long-term recovery.”
Still, “short term” could mean up to 30 years, he says, which would give some of the habitat a chance to grow back.
Border crossing
Whether Canada would ever translocate caribou from the central or northern herds back to the southern herd’s historic range is an open question.
“We’re concentrating on where we still have caribou,” says DeGroot. “Whether we try and bring back the South Selkirk herd some time in the future hasn’t really been discussed yet.”
British Columbia wildlife officials are also considering breeding caribou in captivity with the goal of releasing them into the wild as adults. However, these sorts of efforts, known as captive breeding or conservation breeding, are expensive.
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Joe Scott, international program director for Washington-based Conservation Northwest, isn’t hopeful.
“If the U.S. government, federal and states, were appropriately concerned about caribou then they would actively engage in B.C.’s recovery efforts,” he says.
Most obviously that would mean providing financial assistance to the Canadian government. Instead, he says U.S. agencies are “long on platitudes and short on action.”
“You can’t get a more charismatic mega-fauna,” says Scott. “You can’t get a more significant, globally unique ecosystem than the inland temperate rainforest. And so, if we can’t protect and conserve those things it doesn’t bode well. It’s very discouraging.”
It is great that the Kalispel Tribe of Indians continues to be a leader in Southern Mountain Caribou restoration through their current transboundary cooperation with the Arrow Lakes Caribou Society on an essential maternal penning project to save and restore the Central Selkirk Southern Mountain Caribou herd. For many years I have supported their efforts.
However, though the government of B.C. is providing support for the Arrow Lakes maternal penning project, it has also created many of the problems which threaten to drive the Southern Mountain Caribou into extinction. As B.C. government wildlife biologist Leo DeGroot admitted, “There is a huge resistance to protecting more habitat.”
It’s all about protecting and restoring more habitat.
Not many miles north of the Arrow Lakes Maternity Pen, B.C. is still cutting the Old Growth Habitat at Argonaut Creek which is vital to the North Columbia Herd. The last two “South Selkirk Sisters” were captured and moved to the North Columbia herd both to save them and to diversity the genetics in their new herd. One of the “South Selkirk Sisters” has had 2 calves in the two and a half years she has been with her new herd, which has grown by some forty in number since 2017. I often ask myself why I worked so hard to get the “South Selkirk Sisters” saved only to have B.C. allow the destruction of the old growth forest which has become their new home.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service has been reaching out to the Government of Canada for some time trying to get them to engage in a Binaitonal Recovery Effort for the South Selkirk and other transboundary herds. The US FWS has a plan, Canada and B.C. do not.
The long term goal is to restore herds in Canada so they can migrate back into the US. Let’s remember that Caribou migrate, their pathways have been impeded, but they are not static units and a few migrations by individuals still occur.
The US FWS has also asked Canada to finalize SARA Endangered Status so that the protections provided in Canada can be more seamless with the more strict US Endangered standards. Canada has stalled for seven years to give the Southern Mountain Caribou the protection they need. During that time the population of Mountain Caribou has been cut in half and stands at barely more than 1,000 today.
Restoring the Southern Mountain Caribou species will take a newer approach, focusing on the entire species and its entire habitat and migration corridors on both sides of the border, thus uniting the efforts and focus on individual herds from Jasper National Park to the South Selkirk Mountains.
This effort will also need fresh, new leadership. The bottom line is that governments on both sides of the border are due a lot of criticism for their failure to protect the Southern Mountain Caribou and the jurisdictional boundary difficulties between governments get in the way of the timely preservation work which needs to be done.
We are beginning to learn that indigenous led wildlife and environmental efforts are more successful because of the cultural bond of indigenous people with wildlife and the environment. The most successful caribou maternal penning and restoration effort is being led by the West Moberley and Saulteau First Nations. In 2014 their Klinse-Za herd numbered less than 20, and now the herd has grown to just over 100.
The governments of the U.S. and Canada should support and allow the Ktunaxa Nation of B.C., the Kalispel and Kootenai Tribes of the U.S., and all members of the Ktunaxa Ksanka People whose territory spans the international border to lead in a similar restoration of the international South Selkirk and Prucell-Yaak herds of the Endangered Southern Mountain Caribou.
Efforts are being made stateside to encourage the U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, a Kawaik (Laguna Pueblo) Native American, to promote indigenous leadership in the restoration of the transboundary Southern Mountain Caribou, as she has done in other work of the US. Dept. of the Interior, which includes the USFWS. This could be a helpful step in creating a truly multi-national effort.
One of the real problems I have repeatedly encountered in my years of efforts for the ca
ribou is the disregard from the press, governments, and others north of the border for the concerns of U.S. citizens and our governments for the Southern Mountain Caribou, as if we have no interest or stake in their restoration, and have not gone through decades of efforts to preserve them. More recognition is due from north of the border for our ongoing hard work on caribou restoration stateside and we must all learn from our failures on both sides of the border.
When we can truly put our efforts together respectfully, we will be more effective in the restoration of the Endangered Southern Mountain Caribou on both sides of the border, not to mention that their habitat preservation and restoration is vital to humans too as we fend off climate change.