Parks Canada is working on a draft conservation strategy for caribou in the mountain national parks – and hopes to have a draft document for public review this fall.
The conservation strategy – not to be confused with a recovery strategy – will apply to southern mountain woodland caribou in Banff, Jasper, and Revelstoke-Glacier national parks.
“Our conservation strategy is solely focused on the kinds of things we’re currently doing and proposing to do in future for national park lands,” said Greg Fenton, Parks Canada’s pointman on the strategy and Jasper’s superintendent.
“It will help us raise awareness of what we’re doing and it will also help provide input into a recovery strategy that Environment Canada will be co-ordinating.”
Woodland caribou are slowly disappearing and some scientists predict they could completely disappear from Alberta within 70 years.
Even in federally protected areas like national parks, the future for this symbol of the Canadian wilderness is uncertain.
In Jasper National Park, there are an estimated 250 caribou within two different populations – and their numbers are declining.
The northern A La Peche population is about 150 animals, while the south population, which roams in the Maligne, Tonquin, Jonas Creek and Poboktan Pass areas, is about 100.
That’s down from counts of 450 surveyed in the early 1960s and, based on these trends, scientists predict the south Jasper herd could be completely gone in 40 years without human intervention.
In Banff, an estimated 25 to 40 caribou a century ago dropped to less than 10 by the mid-1990s. The last four individuals were wiped out in an avalanche north of Lake Louise in the spring of 2009.
Caribou historically occurred in two regions of Banff National Park. Caribou in the Nigel Pass area east of the Columbia Icefields were part of the Brazeau Herd that ranged primarily in Jasper and the White Goat Wilderness area. Caribou also lived in the Upper Pipestone and Siffleur Valleys, which are located east of Bow Lake and Peyto Lake.
The earliest written record of caribou in Banff National Park dates back to 1902, when guide Jimmy Simpson tracked two animals in the Siffleur Valley. The highest count in the park was 23 caribou in 1989.
Parks Canada is now in the process of investigating options for re-introduction of caribou into Banff and/or boosting Jasper’s dwindling populations.
They are concentrating their efforts on a captive-rearing program, where 20 caribou from one or several source herds would be held in secure enclosures.
Adult females could supply yearlings for translocations for several years or they could be released into the park, along with calves and yearlings in family groups.
“The conservation strategy will talk about the threats, actions, education and a number of other things that will take place in the national parks,” said Fenton.
“When the time comes for development of recovery strategy for southern mountain caribou, it will require involvement of ourselves, because we manage lands southern mountain caribou are on, as well as the provinces of Alberta and B.C.”
Meanwhile, an Oct. 25 deadline is looming for the federal government’s draft recovery strategy for Canada’s boreal caribou populations.
For the most part, the strategy has been panned by scientists and conservationists, amid fears government is putting industry, such as oil and gas, ahead of caribou protection.
Caribou expert Mark Hebblewhite said he believes caribou conservation will rival that of the spotted owl, which sparked fierce debate in the 1980s between environmentalists and the timber industry.
“I believe this will be the single biggest environmental issue facing Canada in the next 100 years; it will come to the core of how much we value caribou,” said Hebblewhite, who has studied caribou for close to 20 years.
“Some people might value them in a zoo, or up north where they doesn’t affect daily lives, but we can’t ignore caribou; we have to decide where and when we want to preserve them.”
