Finally, as Canadians have long hoped, the southern “mountain” caribou has been listed in the U.S. under the Endangered Species Act, itself imperilled by the Trump administration, but that’s another story.
There’s a bit of confusion over caribou nomenclature. Let’s first say that there is one caribou species, (called “reindeer” in Eurasia) that is divided throughout its huge northern range into a series of some 17 “subspecies” distinguished by minor variations of size, shape and/or color patterns. Two of those, one Canadian, the other from Greenland, are extinct. Subspecies will interbreed with each other where respective ranges meet, producing intergrades with shared features.
Seven surviving subspecies are found in North America. One, the “woodland” caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou), is also known as the boreal or mountain caribou, and is the largest subspecies, and best known and most widely distributed in North America. Most caribou are migratory, some altitudinally – spending summer and winter at different elevations – while others are famous for long treks across the frozen landscape.
Journalist Sarah Cox recently outlined the irony of the situation in an in depth article that discusses the “mountain” caribou of south-central British Columbia (B.C.). For management purposes, this subpopulation of woodland caribou is divided into 17 subpopulations, of which four have been wiped out, including that group whose numbers just spilled over into the northern corners of the states of Washington and Idaho. The listing will, I hope, protect habitat should they be lured back south, or translocated from Canada.
But, Canada is not protecting the habitat for these animals. As I’ve seen for myself, encroachment and the cutting of forests continues, some of perhaps the most damaging of a suite of human activities that are wiping out the mountain caribou. These are seen as revenue generators and so they continue, as similar actions do across the province, not-so-slowly destroying its ecological integrity and the wildness that it brags about in tourist brochures.
The government blames wolves, killing them off as though that will miraculously do…well, what I’m not sure, but it won’t save caribou. Wolves and caribou have co-existed since long before the first humans reached what we now call the western hemisphere. Wolves are not the problem. Since 2013, B.C. approved 22 various kinds of disturbances in “no harvest zones” designated as winter range for the caribou. From October 2018 to July 2019, industrial logging was okayed by B.C. for 5,290 hectares in the Hart Ranges, while claiming to be protecting the species.
It’s a sham, and the hope is that maybe, just maybe, the new American listing will pressure B.C. to stop scapegoating wolves and get real about protecting what’s left of the caribou, by whatever name you wish to call them. The U.S. is protecting habitat where the caribou are gone; we Canadians need to protect it where they still exist.
Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Barry
