Immediate population management needed to save remaining caribou herds, study shows

 March 12, 2019 by Michael Brown, University of Alberta

The fate of woodland caribou rest on a varied, immediate and intense response to reduce predation rates, according to a University of Alberta-led comprehensive review of population recovery measures.

"This is a conservation emergency," said Rob Serrouya, director of the Caribou Monitoring Unit of the U of A-affiliated Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute and lead author on the study. "Four herds in B.C. and Alberta have gone extinct over the last 25 years and there are less than 3,000 woodland caribou in the study area in the two provinces."

With the clock ticking, Serrouya's team analyzed results from 25 years of attempts to manage caribou populations in an area covering more than 90,000 square kilometres in the southern portion of the Canadian Rocky mountains. The population management treatments studied were translocation, wolf reduction, moose reduction and maternity penning, which involves protecting caribou and their newborns during labour and for a month after birth.

What the group found was—save for the translocation, which Serrouya said was doomed to fail as it happened in an area where there was no predator reduction—removing wolves, moose and using maternity pens each worked. However, the researchers also found that if at least two of the treatments were tried in combination, population growth of the caribou was increased even more so.

The most dramatic population surge occurred In the Klines-Za population, north of Prince George, BC, where maternal penning and wolf removal strategies were used. In three years, the herd nearly doubled, from 36 to more than 67.

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Skiers are putting these rare Canadian caribou on a slippery slope

By Annie Roth Dec. 11, 2017 , 9:45 AM

A remnant herd of caribou in eastern Canada faces a grave threat from a surprising source: backcountry skiers. The endangered woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) live atop the snowy mountains of Gaspésie National Park, near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River in southern Quebec province in Canada. Over the past 30 years, this population has shrunk by 63%—to just about 70 animals—as a result of increased predation by coyotes and black bears, as well as competition for food with growing numbers of moose and deer. Hikers and skiers are allowed on most of the mountains in Gaspésie National Park. But the resident caribou appear unwilling to share their slopes with tourists: The presence of just six skiers at the summit was enough to send the animals scurrying down to lower elevations, where they face a far greater risk of predation by coyotes, researchers report in the current issue of Biological Conservation.

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Endangered caribou, birds and frogs among animals threatened by Enbridge pipeline: documents

OTTAWA — Endangered populations of woodland caribou, along with rare types of birds and frogs, are among a list of at least 15 species that face threats from the potential construction of Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta to British Columbia, reveals newly released government records.

Internal correspondence between the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Environment Canada warned the project could affect the populations, listed under schedule one of Canada's Species at Risk Act.

Link to internal government notice

Schedule one is considered to be the most serious of three categories under the federal legislation. The designation is issued for species following a scientific evaluation by a committee of government and non-government experts.

Lawyers for Ecojustice, a Canadian environmental law organization, said the correspondence, released to Postmedia News through access to information legislation, raises new questions about the potential impacts of the project and the risks of proposed changes to laws such as the Species At Risk Act that were included in Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's budget implementation legislation, bill C-38.

A spokesman for the Alberta-based energy company that is proposing the 1,200 km pipeline to ship oil from Edmonton to Kitimat, B.C. and send condensate, used to thin petroleum products for transport in pipelines, in the opposite direction, said it wasn't disputing any species listed under the federal legislation.

But the company also told Postmedia News it was working to reduce impacts to species at risk in the $6.6 billion project's design.

"The route selection process includes consideration for avoidance of protected, critical or sensitive habitats and further route refinements may be considered as new species of concern and their habitat are identified," said Todd Nogier, the manager of corporate and western access communications for Enbridge.

"Northern Gateway will contribute toward additional research to help mitigate the effects of the project on the marine, freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems."

The notice about the species at risk was sent on July 21, 2010 by Alastair Beattie, an environmental assessment analyst at the fisheries department, to Jeffrey Barry, the manager of environmental assessment and marine programs section of Environment Canada.

The Northern Gateway project and other proposed pipeline projects would allow Canadian oil companies operating in the oilsands region to expand production and exports to new markets in the United States and Asia.

Apart from the boreal and southern mountain populations of woodland caribou, the list also included sprague's pipit, the short tailed albatross, the pink footed shearwater, the marbled murrelet, the northern goshawk Queen Charlotte (laingii) subspecies, the western toad, the yellow rail, the rusty blackbird, the western screech-owl, the peregrine falcon pealei subspecies, the cryptic paw, the coast tailed frog, and the long-billed curlew.

The 15 species listed in the notice did not include marine mammals such as humpback and fin whales that could be killed or harmed by the increased traffic or unintentional collisions with supertankers transporting the oil from the pipeline.

Continued:  http://www.theprovince.com/technology/Endangered+caribou+birds+frogs+among+animals+threatened+Enbridge/6814256/story.html