Caribou

This commentary by Eric Hebert-Daly, CPAWS’ National Executive Director, appeared in The Hill Times on April 26, 2010.

It’s 2010, the International Year of Biodiversity. The seven-year old federal Species At Risk Act is under review by the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Environment. It’s timely to ask some tough questions.

Is it realistic to expect that the federal government will be able to save Canada’s 500 plus species that have been identified as at risk of extinction? Does Canada really have what it takes to become a world leader in nature conservation?

Less than 10% of our land base and 1% of our waters are protected. Industrialization is advancing ever further north and ecosystems that we once never worried about are now a bulldozer away from being altered forever. Climate change is adding new stresses on wildlife and their habitat. The time is now for new visionary thinking and action to protect the globally important wilderness that lies within our borders.

Given our country’s constitutional structure, with environmental responsibilities shared by federal, provincial and territorial governments, what will it take for Canada to emerge as a groundbreaking trendsetter in protecting our irreplaceable wilderness?

The case of Canada’s nationally at-risk Boreal woodland caribou is an excellent test of our ability to rise to the challenge of preserving our country’s natural ecosystems. These majestic animals that are symbols of Canada’s wilderness once ranged throughout most of the country. But human activities have reduced their habitat by about half since the first Europeans landed. Today the woodland caribou is confined almost entirely to Canada’s northern Boreal forests.

Although their range is still vast, Boreal woodland caribou are listed as threatened or worse under the federal Species At Risk Act throughout the country, with the exception of the island of Newfoundland. An umbrella species signaling the health of our Boreal forests and wetlands, Boreal woodland caribou require large intact wilderness areas to survive. If their habitat is fragmented by roads, farming, logging, mining and energy development, it opens up more access to predators such as wolves, and caribou generally disappear within about 20 years.

A quick look at the last 10 years of attempts to address the plight of Boreal woodland caribou shows only too starkly that the federal government can’t go it alone on species protection. In 2000, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) assessed the entire population of Boreal woodland caribou as “threatened”. “Recovery planning” began the following year under a program with the ironic acronym of RENEW, which stood for the “Recovery of Nationally Endangered Wildlife, and continued under the Species At Risk Act after it was passed in 2003.

Many more years of study followed, as did pressure on the federal government from conservation groups including CPAWS to prepare a recovery plan based on the critical habitat needs of the species. Finally, in 2009 Environment Canada released a groundbreaking report prepared under the Species At Risk Act. The report wasn’t a recovery strategy, but it did contain an unprecedented scientific assessment of the extent of the range of habitat Boreal woodland caribou required tosurvive.

Still however, we await the release of a recovery strategy, which is now expected in 2011, following consultations with aboriginal people who have long lived in harmony with Boreal woodland caribou, and even further scientific study. Meanwhile caribou populations continue to decline.

Our learning from this process is this – the Species At Risk Act is an essential tool that enables the federal government to get involved in protecting species. But on its own, it’s insufficient. Conserving wilderness on the grand scale required by wide-ranging species such as the caribou demands concerted action by many parties who are intimately affected.

Those parties include governments at the federal, provincial, territorial and First Nations levels. They include industries like forestry, mining, and energy developers. They also include conservation groups. All of these parties need to bring their knowledge, skills and a shared commitment to sustaining our country’s natural wealth to the table.

The federal government can play a leadership role in this process. We’ve been encouraged in recent years by this government’s interest in protecting Canada’s natural heritage. Theprotection of over 100,000 km 2 of land in the Northwest Territories, including the massive expansion last year of Nahanni National Park Reserve, and other progress in establishing new national parks is a strong indication of commitment.

We’re also strongly encouraged by commitments of several provinces in the past few years to protecting large portions of their Boreal forests. In 2008, Premier McGuinty in Ontario and Premier Charest in Quebec both committed their provinces to protecting at least half of their northern Boreal landscapes. Last summer, the Alberta government opened the first door in more than a decade to new protected areas through newly announced land use planning processes.

The time is now to dedicate our collective abilities to a national effort to protect our natural heritage. That is the only way we’ll succeed in placing Canada at the forefront of nature-nurturing nations.

About a month ago I covered a newser at Fort Whyte Centre featuring the University of Manitoba’s David Barber and his work in Canada’s north documenting global warming. Here’s the story.

Since then I’ve ended up on a couple of email lists decrying the work of Barber and other scientists who fear the impact of climate change is a lot more rapid than first thought.

The most recent comes from Peter Salonius of New Brunswick who cites former television meteorologist Anthony Watts who claims melting Arctic ice may have more to do with wind than warming.

We’ve already heard a lot about climate change and its impact on polar bears; ice is forming later on Hudson Bay and delaying when the bears head out on the ice to hunt seals.

What hasn’t been talked about much, at least in southern media, is the possible impact of climate change on the barren-land caribou.

A year ago I did a piece on the Beverly and Qamanirjuaq caribou herds that range in Nunavut, the Northwest Territories and northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Experts say the Beverly herd appears to have almost disappeared – it once numbered in the thousands – and the same fate could happen to the Qamanirjuaq herd.

"The NWT government has conducted reconnaissance surveys on the Beverly calving ground for the past three years, finding fewer and fewer animals," the Beverly and Qamanirjuaq Caribou Management Board (BQCMB) says in a recent release.

"In June 2009, less than 100 adult caribou were counted on the calving ground during the peak of the calving period, compared to 5,737 animals counted using comparable methods in 1994."

Manitoban Ross Thompson is BQCMB secretary-treasurer and the board is supported by the Manitoba government. The board recently met in Saskatoon.

The current size of the Beverly herd is not known, the BQCMB adds. It says reconnaissance surveys are not population surveys – they only provide a snapshot of some of the animals on the calving ground during the June calving period. In 1994, when surveys required to calculate a population estimate were last done, the herd numbered around 276,000.

"These recent calving ground surveys suggest that the Beverly herd has suffered a major population decline," the board says. "The causes are likely a mix of natural and human-caused factors. These include the natural caribou population cycle, diseases, changes in habitat (including winter range lost to forest fires), parasites, and predation. Limited satellite-collar data indicate that some cows that had previously calved on the Beverly calving ground have shifted to the Ahiak calving ground in recent years. The Beverly herd may also have been affected by human-caused activities, including climate change, mineral exploration and development, and hunter harvest.

"The BQCMB urges everyone – governments, companies and individuals alike – to do everything possible to take pressure off the Beverly herd right away. The herd will need the most favourable conditions over many years for its numbers to increase again."

Why the numbers have to increase is simple: Many people who live in Canada’s north hunt caribou to feed their families.

The BQCMB says its next step is for members to visit caribou-range communities to talk with residents about what’s happening.

The idea is to collect more information from the people who live in the north about what should be done.

The BQCMB will write up its findings and recommendations to release in the fall of 2011.

More information about the Beverly and Qamanirjuaq herds.

The United Nations has declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity. It would be great if the year could be simply a celebration of the Earth's biological richness, but Biodiversity Year is occurring while non-human life on our planet is in a more perilous state than ever before.

Experts believe the world is in the midst of a biodiversity crisis on par with earlier mass extinction events. Some 17,000 of the plant and animal species that we've identified and assessed are now in serious decline, including many that are well-known and well-loved by Canadians, such as caribou, polar bears, and some salmon populations.

This perilous situation for plants and animals threatens not only the ecological health of ecosystems like old-growth forests and arctic tundra but also the wellbeing and welfare of human communities that depend on the ecological goods and services that nature provides. The deep bio-cultural ties to the land and its resources, especially wild plants, that many of Canada's aboriginal people have long held offer a direct illustration of this, as well as a source of knowledge that can benefit everyone.

A report just released by the David Suzuki Foundation and its allies, Conservation Value of the North American Boreal Forest from an Ethnobotanical Perspective, considers the importance of Canada's boreal forest to aboriginal people as a storehouse of plant resources. Boreal plants, like Labrador tea, wild rice, jack pine, and countless other trees, shrubs, and herbs have always played a significant role in the culture of the people who inhabit this vast northern region that extends from Newfoundland to the Yukon.

Food and beverage plants, such as wild chives and chokecherry, provide essential nutrients to complement a predominately meat-based diet. Medicinal plants, such as lingonberry, mountain alder, and common juniper are at the core of a holistic approach to healthcare and have been used for millennia to treat a myriad of ailments, from easing aches and pains and curing urinary-tract infections to assisting in childbirth. Before the introduction of modern technologies, boreal plants also offered materials for transportation, such as balsam fir timber used to make canoe frames and tamarack fibres used in snowshoes.

This range of benefits reflects a long tradition of botanical and ecological knowledge that aboriginal people have acquired over thousands of years of using the boreal forest as grocery, pharmacy, school, and spiritual haven.

Traditional knowledge held by Canada's First Nations is not just a relic of the past. It offers scientists, policy-makers, resource companies, environmentalists, and anyone else who cares about the boreal a vitally important information source to better manage the region's land and resources.

University of Victoria environmental studies professor Nancy Turner argues that we must not overlook the close interrelationships between indigenous peoples and their lands. Scientists must respect indigenous people as keepers of traditional ecological knowledge.

Too often, we undervalue the contribution of aboriginal traditional ecological knowledge in our debates about resource extraction, wildlife management, and land-use planning. We must remember that aboriginal people were actively involved in managing the boreal and other regions long before western science or industrial development came along. For example, boreal people commonly used landscape burning to maintain soil productivity, healthy wildlife populations, and a diversity of habitats. The practice has since been adopted by many forestry companies.

Such scientific information has been encoded in indigenous peoples' languages and has been passed on through stories and place names. Indeed, indigenous people have mapped the landscape and resources of the boreal forest to a much greater extent than scientists had previously understood. For example, the Gwich'in in the Northwest Territories long ago identified black currant island in the Husky River area. The Dogrib call Mesa Lake in the Northwest Territories Gots'okati, which translates as Cloudberry Lake. This type of detailed information on the ecological and cultural importance of places and landscapes that are important to aboriginal people can help planners prioritize what areas should be protected.

We must ensure that wilderness and wildlife conservation, including creating new parks and protected areas, recognizes indigenous rights to land and water and includes the involvement of indigenous peoples. The fact that we're now seeing more and more integration of thousands of years of traditional knowledge with modern science in Canada's boreal forest gives us one reason to celebrate the International year of Biodiversity.

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David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and chair of the David Suzuki Foundation. Faisal Moola is the director of science at the foundation (www.davidsuzuki.org).

Newly released government data uncovers woodland caribou living in an area between Thompson and The Pas that is scheduled for intensive logging operations. As suitable habitat for caribou in the area is limited, large-scale industrial forestry activities may lead to the demise of the local population.

The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society and the Manitoba Wilderness Committee are calling for a halt to logging operations in this area, and all intact caribou habitats, until the province can demonstrate that adequate measures have been put in place to ensure long-term caribou survival.

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Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, - Today the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society is launching a series of new tongue in cheek videos aimed at helping caribou populations in three provinces. Forest dwelling woodland caribou are in danger right across the country, and some of the greatest opportunities for conservation lie in Quebec, Manitoba and Ontario. Today, in these videos, a cousin of CPAWS’ very own Bou launches a quest to defend his belt. Caribou must win the fight against the destruction of his habitat in those three provinces ... (Read full article)

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• ACT NOW to save the Caribou from going extinct in Manitoba