by Maggie Paquet
Virtually all of the world’s mountain caribou live in British Columbia, where their populations have been declining for at least the last half century. Initially, the decline was attributed to over-hunting; regulations were changed and their numbers rebounded.
For at least the past 40 years, logging has beenthe primary cause of their decline. In 1995, there were an estimated 2,500 mountain caribou; today’s estimate is about 1,200 to 1,400.
What is a mountain caribou? They are one of three ecotypes of woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) found in BC, the other two being northern caribou and boreal caribou. Their differentiation into ecotypes is based on characteristic behaviour and habitat use, rather than on genetics. For the most part, they can also be geographically differentiated with the northern ecotype inhabiting the high plateaus in BC’s north (such as the Spatsizi), the boreal inhabiting the lowland plains of BC’s northeast, and the mountain ecotype inhabiting BC’s south-central and southeastern mountains, primarily the ranges from the southern Rockies west to the Monashees and north into the Wells Gray and MacGregor mountains areas; they typically inhabit old-growth Interior “wet belt” forests. Some non-contiguous populations also inhabit the central Coast Ranges (eastern Tweedsmuir area and near Smithers).
The 1997 publication, Toward a Management Strategy for Mountain Caribou: Background Report, says: “This mountain ecotype…inhabits old-growth forests of the wet Interior and exhibits different habitat use patterns, seasonal migrations, predator-avoidance tactics, and winter diet selections from those of the northern [and boreal] ecotype.”
Mountain caribou are a separate ecotype primarily because they behave differently than the northern and boreal ecotypes. Behaviour is critical because it is what enables an animal to use its habitat successfully. In the wet forests and mountainous terrain where they live, winters are long and snow is deep. Because they cannot dig deep enough to find food on the forest floor, they subsist for six to eight months almost exclusively on arboreal lichens, which are very slow-growing and “only found in useful quantities in forests 125 or more years old.”
Another reason they are a separate ecotype is because of their movement patterns. They have two primary migrations annually, moving from the high elevations to the valleys, and in winter, moving back up to subalpine forests to feed almost exclusively on arboreal lichens. Additionally, cows travel alone to remote areas to calve, most likely to minimize risk from predation. When these areas are disturbed, the animals’ stress levels rise and can profoundly affect reproduction success.
Science, Ethics (?), and All Kinds of Politics
There has been a long history of research, reports, stakeholder meetings, press releases – what-have-you – on mountain caribou in BC. Is it merely another example of the old “talk-and-log” exercise with which we’re all so familiar? You be the judge.
In 1988, the Mountain Caribou in Managed Forests (MCMF) program was initiated in the Prince George area and, in 1990 was expanded to include the southeastern portion of the province with similar forestry-caribou habitat-related issues and concerns. In 1994, the preliminary results of MCMF activities were summarized in the report, Mountain Caribou in Managed Forests: Preliminary Recommendations for Managers. The recommendations were not implemented. In 1993, mountain caribou were on the province’s “blue list” (at risk/vulnerable) of species at risk, with a then-estimated population of 2,520. As far back as 1984, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada considered most populations to be rare, and those in the Selkirks to be endangered. In 2000, BC’s Conservation Data Centre put mountain caribou on the “red list” (threatened/ endangered/extirpated).
In the foreword to the 1997 background report, the Wildlife Branch’s endangered species specialist wrote:
Conservation of mountain caribou has a long history in BC, beginning at least 70 years ago with efforts to control overharvest through stricter hunting regulations. Even the importance of habitat in maintaining healthy caribou populations was investigated more than 40 years ago, and the role of predation was first explored over 20 years ago. Recent conservation efforts have focused on the effects of timber management on mountain caribou and their habitat… Experience in other parts of Canada has shown that large-scale timber extraction is not compatible with the persistence of woodland caribou populations…Our global responsibility for the persistence of mountain caribou is high, since BC supports over 90 percent of the world population…
In 2002, the BC government’s Mountain Caribou Technical Advisory Committee (MCTAC) published A Strategy for the Recovery of Mountain Caribou in British Columbia. This report stated that mountain caribou had been “extirpated from 43% of their historic BC range,” and that at the time of writing, there were an estimated 1900 animals in 13 local populations. The strategy was never implemented. Meanwhile, between 1994 and 2002, the South Purcells subpopulation went from 90 to 20 animals, a 78% decline. In 2005, government announced another science team and another set of management options. These were never implemented.
So far, no one has seen any positive results over the past decades of successive initiatives promising to protect and/ or restore mountain caribou populations. The latest activity is called The Mountain Caribou Recovery Implementation Plan. Government announced this plan in October 2007, and said its goal was “to protect 95% of the high suitability winter habitat within identified herd areas.”
Since the announcement, government has proceeded with numerous scientific studies and meetings with industry groups, First Nations, and “stakeholders” (environmental groups, commercial backcountry recreation associations, snowmobile, snow-cat and heli-ski clubs, etc.). Is this yet another rationale for logging mountain caribou habitats, or for selling commercial backcountry recreation tenures? Is it a plan for killing predators or increasing hunting of moose, deer, and elk? Or is it really a mountain caribou recovery plan? The short answer to all these questions is: Who knows? But there are agencies and organizations “signing off” on it and others roundly criticizing it.
Guarded Support or Vigorous Dissent, or Is That a Tree Falling In The Forest?
ForestEthics, part of the coalition called the Mountain Caribou Project (www.mountaincaribou.org), guardedly supports the recovery plan. They contracted former Environment Canada scientist Dr. Lee Harding to review it. When he published the report in early May 2008, Dr. Harding stated, “The principal difficulty of applying the latest version of the recovery strategy is the constraints imposed to protect commercial interests.”
On 21 May 2008, Harding was quoted by CBC:
Even though the BC government announced a caribou recovery plan last October, the animals are Caribou continued facing extinction. We have had three different recovery plans … for these caribou in the last 20 years and there still has yet to be any substantial action to actually protect the[m]… Government constraints on habitat protection and upcoming agreements with recreation groups spell doom for the remaining animals, because the caribou are dependent on the same old growth forests favoured by loggers, and they can’t survive disturbances that come with snowmobilers and heli-ski operators. I can imagine all of them going extinct in a few decades, and more than half of the populations going extinct very soon.
The Valhalla Wilderness Society (VWS, www.vws. org) is adamant that this latest plan will do little to protect mountain caribou and their habitats. They say the province’s claim that 95% of high suitability winter and early winter habitats would be protected is impossible given the terms cited in the plan (re the 1% cap of the THLB, etc.). VWS has also objected to the lack of full and open public participation in developing a recovery strategy.
The main points of contention between supporters of the plan and its critics are these:
1. The requirement for a 1% cap on protecting habitat in the timber harvest land base (THLB).
2. The requirement to protect local forest operations (for both pulp and saw mills).
3. The requirement to NOT affect the Allowable Annual Cut and 5-year logging operations plans.
4. The government-stated policy of “no net loss” of short term timber supply.
5. All the problems associated with public and commercial winter recreation, and the inability of government to achieve (and enforce) the needed closures.
6. The predator control policies; placing the blame for fewer mountain caribou on wolves and cougars particularly, but also on wolverines, bears, and coyotes.
7. The recommended Progress Board to monitor results and effect adaptive management is not yet in place.
Additionally, the many reports and comments from the various government agencies, industry, and environmental groups all indicate that even if this plan could bring the number of mountain caribou back up to pre-1995 numbers, it would require an enormous effort to produce the technical and mapping requirements needed, but the budget for all this effort has not materialized.
The Wolf As Scapegoat (For Bad Logging and Recreation Policies and Practices)
BC’s Species at Risk Coordination Office is responsible for the recovery of mountain caribou. The following statement on their website (www.env.gov.bc.ca/ sarco/mc/index.html) leads off with this explanation:
The decline of this ecotype is proximally due to high mortality linked to predation and disturbance in the short-term. In the long-term, mountain caribou are threatened by habitat fragmentation, alteration and loss of old growth forest…”
This looks like dissembling to me. While predation on mountain caribou has likely increased in some populations, there is no doubt – scientific or otherwise – that in the last third of the 20th century, the principal cause for their decline is logging in their preferred habitats, coupled with increased access and disturbance from winter recreation activities. Not only has logging caused the loss of the principal winter food source for mountain caribou, the habitat fragmentation and changes caused by logging have made habitats attractive to other ungulate species, notably moose, elk, and deer. The infrastructure that facilitates both logging and recreation not only fragments mountain caribou habitat, it allows for easier access by predators. The predator- prey balance has been completely shattered.
The scientists agree. The 2002 MCTAC recovery strategy report (p. 17) states:
While numerous factors have been associated with the historic decline in Mountain Caribou numbers, forestry has been recognized as the greatest concern to caribou habitat management over the past 20 years. Within the past 10 years the concern has increased, since logging has moved into highelevation forest types…. The habitat requirements of mountain caribou…are incompatible with most current forest management practices.
A paper on the website (www.env.gov.bc.ca/sarco/mc/ files/Mountain_Caribou_Situation_Analysis.pdf) written by the Mountain Caribou Science Team (May 2005), rather disingenuously attributes predation as the “major natural cause of mortality in all ungulate populations” and describes how the increase of moose, deer, and elk in mountain caribou range has attracted increased numbers of predators, primarily wolves and cougars, without explaining that the prey animals began using caribou habitats because of BC’s long-term non-spatial (i.e., they “creamed” the forests) logging system. The wolves and cougars merely followed their usual prey animals.
In a February 27, 2009 letter to a citizen who complained about the use of killing (mostly wild) horses to bait wolves for predator control, Environment Minister Barry Penner replied, in part:
On October 16, 2007 the BC government announced its endorsement of the extensively consulted Mountain Caribou Recovery Implementation Plan… Included among the BC Government’s ongoing commitments to mountain caribou recovery implementation are:
• Protecting 2.2 million hectares, including 95 percent of high suitability mountain caribou winter habitat, from logging and road building.
• Managing recreation to reduce human disturbance in mountain caribou habitat • Managing predator and alternate prey populations to reduce predator and other ungulate (moose and deer) densities in areas where predation is preventing mountain caribou recovery.
At the very least, this recovery plan certainly describes an effective program for killing wolves. One would think that the fairy tale notion of the “big bad wolf” had gone the way of the Dodo. Rather, what looks to be headed in the Dodo’s direction is the mountain caribou. Instead of limiting recreation, the province chooses to kill predators. Research shows wolves are limited by their ability to reach caribou in winter use habitats when these areas are not made artificially accessible by tracks made by snow machines (snow-cats, snowmobiles, etc.). The science hasn’t been done to determine which caribou herds are affected by predation, and if they are, by which predators. The root reason why there is imbalance in the predator-prey system hasn’t been determined for every herd. Is it low calf recruitment? If so, why?
In his above-mentioned letter, Minister Penner also stated that habitat loss and fragmentation have been identified as a major factor in mountain caribou declines. In fact, habitat loss and fragmentation are the major factors in the decline of these animals. The primary reason mountain caribou habitats have been lost and fragmented is logging… that and roads. About six years ago, while driving on Highway 3 near Moyie Lake, I witnessed a large transport truck plow through a small group of mountain caribou. Two of the animals (as evidenced by the number of heads) were smeared all over the highway in various chunks, while four or five stood on the shoulder looking for all the world like they were bewildered. I’ll never forget it. Stunned drivers were pulling over to the side of the road in both directions, but the big truck kept on going. I wondered how many times and in how many places this scene would be repeated in that year alone.
Everyone Agrees on One Thing – the Uncertainty
Both the critics and the supporters of the plan say it is rife with uncertainty. As Dr. Harding says, mountain caribou are wide-ranging; their actual likelihood to be present at a given location is, at best, unpredictable, which puts the forest planning adequacy in doubt.
And then there’s climate change. In some areas, the snow pack is lower, but the snow is lasting longer. There are more insects that could affect either the caribou or what they eat, or both. What is needed is a recovery plan that (a) is based on good, honest, science and that takes the precautionary principle seriously; (b) that will be budgeted for; and (c) that will be implemented. The political clout of logging companies is undoubtedly the main reason successive BC governments have been unable – more likely, unwilling – to do much about the status of this animal. And with the decline of the forest industry, commercial backcountry recreation is rapidly taking its place. Everything in this province is for sale, it seems. If there were any money in saving mountain caribou and their habitats, then they would have been saved long ago.
What’s continuing to happen with mountain caribou is a microcosm of global habitat and species loss. Decisionmakers do not want to embrace “limits to growth.” Society on the whole doesn’t want restrictions. Given these facts, this new plan will be about as effective as all the other ones that preceded it.
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Maggie Paquet is a consultant biologist who has been involved in environmental issues in BC and elsewhere for at least three decades. She lives in Port Alberni.