A blog about national conservation efforts on behalf of Canada's forest-resident, woodland caribou (rangifer tarandus caribou) and their climate change moderating home - Canada's Boreal forest wilderness.
What a week it was. Woodland caribou in the Mealy Mountains of the far eastern Boreal and woodland caribou in the Peel Watershed of the far western Boreal are still dancing.
The federal Minister of the Environment, Jim Prentice,
protected the Mealy Mountains in a National Park soon to be complimented with an adjacent provincial Park . The estimated 2,000 caribou of the Mealy Mountains herd are ecstatic. This herd, a local population of COSEWIC's "Boreal population" was assessed in the recent Critical Habitat Science Review as one of the most resilient herds in the country (probability of persistence of 80%). The Innu of Labrador, who have been long-time proponents of the Park and of caribou conservation, are to be congratulated and thanked!
At the extreme opposite of the Boreal, the Yukon Government,
took dramatic action to withdraw the entire Peel Watershed planning region from mineral staking for one-year adding significant momentum to the effort of CPAWS and others to ensure a network of protected areas and special conservation areas in the watershed. Woodland caribou around the country are celebrating, the Peel watershed is home 23 of the northernmost populations of woodland caribou in Canada - 23 local populations of COSEWIC's "Northern Mountain population", including the entire range of the estimated 5,000 member Bonnet Plume herd.
Good news indeed!
It is confirmed, the Caribou of Banff National Park are dead. The remaining five animals were extirpated by an avalanche.
In the current issue of the journal Conservation Biology, a group of scientists familiar with the sad plight of Banff National Park's woodland caribou, put the blame for their extirpation squarely on "uncoordinated and underfunded" recovery planning efforts.
The authors note that a "similar failure by Environment Canada to implement recovery planning for boreal woodland caribou across the country will most likely contribute to caribou population declines".
Unlike its efforts for the Southern Mountain Population, of which the Banff National Park caribou were a subset, Environment Canada has a draft Recovery Strategy and a Scientific Review of Critical Habitat for the Boreal Population of woodland caribou and is rapidly consulting with Aboriginal Canadians. Efforts are moving to propose a final recovery strategy, albeit that they are now over two and a half years overdue.
Let's hope we can avoid a repeat.
News stories today are confirming that the terms of reference provided by the Alberta Cabinet to the first Regional Advisory Committee (RAC) established under its new Land Use Framework direct the RAC to identify in excess of 20% protection for the Lower Athabaska. This decision breaks a deadlock on the establishment of new protected areas in Alberta and opens up the likelihood that the
advice of the Woodland Caribou biologists - the Alberta Caribou Committee -will be heeded. Could Alberta be the first province to implement new protected areas to respond the
new science of Woodland Caribou critical habitat? Is it snowing anywhere unlikely?
Well, the momentum grows. Thanks to the encouragement of Greenpeace, Kimberly-Clark has agreed to implement a purchasing policy that will support the growing momentum for conservation of the Boreal forest and the woodland caribou's home. Here are some highlights from the policy:
- "By the end of 2011, Kimberly-Clark will stop purchasing non-FSC certified wood fiber from the North American Boreal region."
- "Kimberly-Clark will support programs for the identification and mapping of Endangered Forests and High Conservation Value Forests to ensure that such areas are designated for appropriate protection."
In the first attempted application of the recent scientific advice on how to identify critical habitat of local populations of woodland caribou in the Boreal (following Environment Canada 2008), CPAWS-Wildlands League in Ontario has employed Ontario government proposed local population range units and more recent data to illuminate the fact that the southern-most populations of caribou in Ontario are, perhaps unsurprisingly, at greater risk than previously appreciated.
- "...local ranges for boreal Caribou along the northern limit of commercial logging in Ontario are already highly disturbed. Based on this extensive disturbance, only 2 of the 9 ranges of this sensitive threatened species are likely to be self-sustaining populations, while 6 of the 9 ranges exceeding the threshold related to the decline of other studied Canadian populations, and the last range well into the zone of risk"
- "Further industrial disturbance cannot be permitted until we confirm these findings and better understand the implications for each local population."
Researchers at the University of Alberta continue to get coverage of their research on the global decline of caribou populations. In a recent article in the Christian Science Monitor, they again emphasize the plight of woodland caribou.
"In the vast Canadian forests, the authors suspect industrial development – roads, logging, and oil and gas exploration – has a greater impact on caribou than changing climate. Caribou prefer old-growth, coniferous forests. They shun roads and other human development."
Two new forthcoming publications describe the old-growth forest attributes of the Boreal forest - home to woodland caribou.
Boreal forests are fire-dominated ecosystems but what these studies demonstrate is that they are old-growth forests in the Boreal, particularly in eastern Canada where the fire-cycle is long and perhaps getting increasingly longer (Cyr et al 2009). Short-rotation logging operations applied across the Boreal are putting biodiversity at risk (Bergeron and Harper 2009). In particular, as the critical habitat science review demonstrated, these logging operations in woodland caribou critical habitats are causing local extirpations of the Boreal forest's flagship species - woodland caribou (Environment Canada 2008).
- "Protecting a proportion of the remaining old-growth in the Boreal forest is urgently required" (Bergeron and Harper 2009: 297).
Cyr, D., S. Gauthier, et al. (2009). "Forest management is driving the eastern North American boreal forest outside its natural range of variability." Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment In Press. and Bergeron, Y. and K. A. Harper (2009). Old-growth forests in the Caandian Boreal: the exception rather than the rule? Old-Growth Forests: Function, fate and value. C. Wirth, G. Gleixner and M. Heimann. Berlin, Springer Berlin Heidelbrg: pp. 285-300.
+North+American+Caribou+range+retraction.png)
