A Canadian caribou herd is making a comeback—but the rescue plan is controversial
. In West Moberly’s rugged homeland, not far from the border with Alberta, their abundance slowly dwindled during the last century as more settlers moved west and their logging, mining, and dam projects broke up old-growth forests and reshaped the landscape. By the time Chief Willson was born, in 1966, the age of enormous herds was gone. By the time he was elected chief, in 2000, caribou in his region had been listed as federally threatened.
In March, West Moberly, Salteau, and their collaborators at the universities of British Columbia, Alberta, and Montana, releasedaimed at saving the Klinse-Za herd. The Klinse-Za are southern mountain caribou, a subspecies once widely distributed through the old-growth forests of south-central British Columbia. Unlike their Arctic cousins, mountain caribou don’t make sweeping migrations, or gather in herds of tens of thousands—at least not anymore.
Lamb explained that, before the project started, the Klinse-Za had been whittled down to near oblivion by a combination of forces, including human development, fragmentation of habitat, and a rise in predators like wolves and grizzly bears. Working with scientists and private consultants—and leveraging their own traditional knowledge of the caribou and the land—the West Moberly and Saulteau oversaw a plan to address these issues as holistically as possible.
“Clear cuts create better habitat for moose and deer,” he said, “which bring in the wolves. And the logging roads are what the predators use to access these areas.” Starr Gauthier and Jordan Garbitt from the Saulteau First Nations wait for a sedated caribou to wake up after transport to the Klinse-Za maternity pen. Research on the depleted Klinse-Za herd has shown that newborn calves were most likely to die from predation. If too few calves survived to reproductive age, the herd would never recover.“Maternal penning” is the practice of catching pregnant caribou and transporting them to a space where they are protected from predators.
Klinse-Za females were captured with netguns fired from a helicopter. Then the animals were transported to the pen in large bags specially designed to keep the long-legged, intricately antlered animals safe .
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