Caribou numbers up 49 per cent after four-year wolf cull

[MOMMA]

How could this possibly be lol. Jeeeeeeze I wish that conservation was simply science based, rather than having the emotional influence of activists contaminating the process. I'm still not sold on the over valuing of habitat preservation, for National Parks have animals dying at the same or expedited rate as what we have where there is Industry and Motorized recreation. They have the habitat, but have had a very hard time with predation, especially during calving season. Our entire ungulate population is so low it's scary here. We are in the area where the last of the South Selkirk and Purcell herd animals were translocated. I'll try to find a link to the Wildlife Symposium I attended in Cranbrook earlier this year that addressed the hipocracy of land grabs by Y2Y.

Here's the link to the full article: https://vancouversun.com/news/local...6_BERnHIiJrX8td70Tg8WpBDhs#Echobox=1570571757
[h=1]Caribou numbers up 49 per cent after four-year wolf cull[/h]Intensive predator management could become an open-ended solution to caribou survival as industrial activity disrupts the landscape.

RANDY SHORE
Updated: October 8, 2019

Cull would target 80% of wolves in parts of B.C. | Vancouver Sun1:27

SHAREADJUSTCOMMENTPRINT
The population of three mountain caribou herds in the South Peace region has risen by 49 per cent just four years into an experimental wolf cull program, according to a new analysis released by the provincial government.
Based on those findings, the report concludes “it is highly recommended that wolf reduction continue to be implemented” until the herds are self-sustaining.
The recovery of the South Peace population is also cited in a proposal for a two-year emergency predator reduction program to halt and reverse the decline of the Tweedsmuir-Entiako and Itcha-Ilgachuz herds in central B.C. east of Bella Coola, and the Hart Ranges herd near the Alberta border.
The government has just completed a stakeholder consultation on the emergency proposal from the B.C. Caribou Recovery Program, but it has not yet been approved, according to the ministry of forests.
The proposal calls for more than 80 per cent of wolves in critical caribou habitat be eliminated using a combination of radio-collaring and aerial shooting. It recommends a population density of fewer than three wolves per 1,000 square kilometres.
The B.C. Wildlife Federation is concerned that intensive predator management will become an open-ended solution to caribou survival as industrial activity disrupts the landscape.
“The science says wolf control does work. It also says this is a Band-Aid interim solution,” said Jesse Zeman, spokesman for the B.C. Wildlife Federation. “If you don’t restore habitat, you will have to cull wolves forever.”
Only 15,000 caribou remain provincewide and at least four herds in the Selkirk and Purcell Mountains are considered “functionally extinct”.
Expanding natural gas exploration and extraction in the northeast corner of the province will likely impact the boreal caribou north of Fort St. John, Zeman said.
Caribou are highly sensitive to disruptions in their natural environment and appear to be suffering dire consequences of seismic exploration, road-building, backwoods recreation, and especially land-clearing, which leads to increasing numbers of other prey species such as moose, elk, and deer.
Wolf populations boom in response to the increased availability of food, and caribou are “incidentally killed because of increased predator density,” the proposal notes.
Exploration corridors, trails and roads also act as predator highways that allow wolves to move through caribou habitat with greater efficiency.
The government is pursuing a $47-million, multi-pronged program aimed at turning around the decades-long decline of the caribou.
An interim ban on industrial and commercial development was announced earlier this year for a large swath of the South Peace, one of the areas proposed for the two-year emergency cull.
Some work has been done on re-wilding roads and disrupted landscapes, including a lichen restoration project in the range of the Tweedsmuir-Entiako herd to increase food availability.
The West Moberly and Saulteau First Nations have been running a successful maternity penning program, which has more than doubled the population of the Klinse-Za herd. Pregnant females are tracked by helicopters, captured and held in a large, fenced enclosure until after they give birth.
The combination of maternity penning and predator reduction is the most potent combination for short-term caribou recovery, said Robert Serrouya, director of the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute’s Caribou Monitoring Unit.
“Habitat restoration is the long-term piece to this strategy, but if we wait for habitat to be restored and do nothing else, there won’t be any caribou to occupy it,” he said.
A recent study of 18 caribou herds led by Serrouya found that herds stabilized or increased in eight of 12 herds in areas that were culled of wolves.
rshore@postmedia.com

 

[AreWeThereYet]

Capture all the wolves and send them to Que.

 

[MOMMA]

Capture all the wolves and send them to Que.

I was thinking Stanley Park in Vancouver, but I'm sure we have more than enough to go around lol

 

[skegpro]

I think the environmentalists would rather have a human cull than a wolf cull.

But the results speak for itself.

 

[MOMMA]

I think the environmentalists would rather have a human cull than a wolf cull.

But the results speak for itself.

You speak the truth lol. There was a symposium about 8 months ago and one of the delegates advocted for everyone to move to city centres to preserve wild habitat (it was a saving the wolves organization). One woman who was a passionate activist in our local kootenay hub for eco-terrorists on a conversation page actually offered to jump off cliff to start the movement to save the earth. I had no words. Health services were called, but seriously.. I don't understand how some humans can simply disregard the lives of others for an activist agenda.

 

[lilduke]

brainwashing, they have been pushing this over population myth for a long time.


I can't count how many times I've read some idiot on the Internet say that "humans are a cancer on the earth"

there is millions of people out there who think that.

 

[rebel]

You speak the truth lol. There was a symposium about 8 months ago and one of the delegates advocted for everyone to move to city centres to preserve wild habitat (it was a saving the wolves organization). One woman who was a passionate activist in our local kootenay hub for eco-terrorists on a conversation page actually offered to jump off cliff to start the movement to save the earth. I had no words. Health services were called, but seriously.. I don't understand how some humans can simply disregard the lives of others for an activist agenda.

I would support a eco-terrorist organized jump off a cliff movement. I'd even rent them a bus to get there.

 

[MOMMA]

[FONT=&quot]Caribou calf in a maternity pen near Revelstoke, 2014, to protect it from wolves until it is old enough to survive. (Black Press Media)[/FONT]

[h=2]B.C. VIEWS: Wolf kill, not backcountry bans, saving caribou[/h][FONT=&quot]B.C.’s largest herds turn the corner from extinction[/FONT]

• TOM FLETCHER
• Oct. 13, 2019 9:40 a.m.
• COLUMNISTS
• OPINION

[FONT=&quot]It would have come as a relief to many B.C. communities when Forests Minister Doug Donaldson told me in September his latest management plans for 20 endangered caribou herds will not require further industrial or back-country bans.

​

Now I understand why Donaldson was able to make that decision, after intensive study and community meetings in the Cariboo, Kootenay and Peace regions, packed with people worried about the future of their already fragile resource economies.
Plunging caribou populations are indeed a crisis, one that can be seen across Canada, all the way to the vast herds of Labrador and northern Quebec that are central to the traditional way of life of Indigenous people. That’s why the federal government is poised to invoke its species-at-risk legislation to impose further protection measures on B.C.
It’s already too late for some of the 54 B.C. herds, despite protected areas, mothers and calves captured and held in maternity pens, and an escalating program to control rising wolf populations by shooting them from the air.
Donaldson acted on the latest report from ministry biologists, showing the first glimmer of hope. Three of B.C.’s largest herds in the South Peace have turned the corner from a steep decline towards extinction, and are trending toward recovery. This is after the maternity penning program was extended from Kootenay herds to the South Peace, and the wolf kill was stepped up over four years.
“The decrease in wolf abundance across the South Peace area has shown conclusive evidence that intensive wolf reduction has halted and reversed the declining trends of the Klinse-Za, Kennedy Siding and Quintette caribou populations,” states the B.C. report submitted to Donaldson in August.
RELATED: Wolf kill working for caribou recovery, study shows
RELATED: U.S. government protects already extinct caribou herd
The existing set-asides are enormous, and their effectiveness is questionable. By 2016, the area off limits to logging and road-building in South Selkirks was 2.2 million hectares, covering 95 per cent of prime mountain caribou habitat. The South Peace recovery plan covered 400,000 hectares of high-elevation winter habitat.
As the B.C. Council of Forest Industries pointed out last year, banning forestry and mining is no magic answer. Caribou are declining in Wells Gray Provincial Park in central B.C. and Jasper National Park in Alberta, where there has been no modern-day industrial disturbance. They’re gone from Banff National Park, which has been protected since 1885.
Another strategy should be given credit: the efforts of local snowmobile and off-road clubs to keep prime habitat off limits. This is backed up by Conservation Officer Service flights over key areas to enforce restrictions, a daunting task given the size and remoteness of regions. More people are becoming aware of the impact a single snowmobile track through deep snow can have, allowing wolves to quickly penetrate areas they could not otherwise reach.
B.C.’s southern mountain herds have range extending into the United States, and this region has had human settlement and industrial activity for longer than B.C.’s northern regions. The contrast between our efforts and those south of the border was highlighted by a sad news report last week in the Revelstoke Review.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finally declared the whole population of southern mountain caribou endangered, months after they became locally extinct in the U.S.
The last three animals in the cross-border herd, known locally as the Grey Ghosts, were captured and relocated to protective pens north of Revelstoke in January. It’s hoped they can bolster a small herd there.
Tom Fletcher is B.C. legislature reporter and columnist for Black Press Media. Email: tfletcher@blackpress.ca
[/FONT]

 

[MOMMA]

Ironically this is the article that prompted my firing from a job in conservation when Wildsights John Bergenske phoned my boss and expressed displeasure with my statement regarding National Parks, Land access, and caribou. I had an ultimatum. To work WITH Wildsight professionally or I'd be fired. I chose the latter. It sucked, as I loved my job, but sometimes you have to stand up for science based conservation even when the consequences are pretty high.

A mountain caribou traverses an alpine ridge in winter. Behind him, a large clearcut fragments the subalpine forest just below treeline. Hart Mountains, BC.

​

South Selkirk caribou herd now unsustainable

The already tiny population’s drop was discovered in an aerial census this spring.

• LORNE ECKERSLEY
• Apr. 17, 2018 2:30 a.m.
• NEWS

A recent count of the South Selkirk caribou herd has revealed that there are only three females left, and environmentalists are now scrambling to consider a response.
“It’s devastating that we’ve nearly lost the South Selkirk caribou herd,” John Bergenske, Wildsight’s Conservation Director, said on Thursday, “but what’s worse is that unless we take immediate action to protect all critical mountain caribou habitat, the South Purcells and other southern herds won’t be far behind.”
Berganske said that Wildsight is mourning the loss of most of the herd in the last year. The already tiny population’s drop was discovered in an aerial census this spring.
“We’ve known for decades that logging, road-building and uncontrolled recreation in mountain caribou habitat are slowly killing off our caribou herds,” Eddie Petryshen, Wildsight’s Conservation Coordinator, said in a press release. “Protecting intact habitat in our mountain rainforest ecosystems is the only way to give our southern caribou herds a chance to survive, but our federal and provincial governments have been dragging their feet for years, ignoring the ongoing destruction of mountain caribou habitat.”
Fewer than 250 mountain caribou remain in the Kootenay and Columbia area, mostly found in herds around Revelstoke, and only thirteen caribou were found in the South Purcells herd census last year.
“The federal government has mapped the mountain caribou habitat that is necessary for the species’ survival, but they have only protected portions of it,” Bergenske said. “This tragic loss of all but three caribou in the South Selkirk herd has to be a wake-up call for Environment Minister Catherine McKenna to act on her responsibility under the Endangered Species Act to protect all critical habitat right now. This is an emergency and our mountain caribou can’t wait any longer for planning without action.”
Relying on a winter diet of lichens that grow on old-growth trees, the southern mountain caribou have faced declining food sources as the result of logging, and the animals are also extremely sensitive to disturbance from motorized recreation. The packing of winter trails by skiers and snowshoe enthusiasts has also contributed to making them more susceptible to predators, Wildsight reps say.
With “nowhere to run” Berganske, the herd‘s decline has continued over the past decade despite the efforts of BC’s Mountain Caribou Recovery Implementation Plan.
“Not only do we need to protect all critical caribou habitat now, we need to restore degraded and fragmented habitat,” says Bergenske, “and that means the province and the federal government need to put real resources into habitat restoration immediately.”

​

“Today, the South Purcells herd is facing not just loss of their habitat, but serious threats from ever-increasing recreation, including a new proposal for heliskiing and helibiking in their habitat,” says Petryshen. “If we don’t take emergency measures now, it may be too late for the South Purcells herd.”
Trish Drinkle says that the story is complex and that too often conservation efforts are influenced by emotion when they should be driven by science.
Drinkle, an avid snowmobiler and dirt biker, has also been working with the Recovery Implementation group.
“What is most frustrating is when politics gets in the way of conservation,” she said on Monday. “What feels good to people in urban areas often does not reflect the realities of the backcountry. More closures will make no difference. 80 percent of the caribou habitat has already been secured.”
Important to note, she said, is that caribou herds have also been declining in national parks, where they are protected from most of the concerns listed by Wildsight.
“I wanted the caribou to be protected from vehicles on the highway, and to keep them from being habituated in the Kootenay Pass area,” she said. “Predation management (a wolf kill, for example) was necessary, but it was too little too late.”
Drinkle said that history indicates that human activity is not the only threat to the mountain caribou.
In 1918, she said, there was a hunting closure to protect the South Selkirk herd.
“Climate change as noted back then as a factor,” she said. “This is no longer a viable environment and habitat—we need to focus on herds where the habitat is viable. If the caribou here struggled in 1918, why would it be different now?”
Conservation “is tough”, she said. “Conservation is science, not emotion. The majority of the population is in urban areas and they see conservation as a feel-good issue. ‘Don’t hunt the grizzly bear, but keep the caribou alive’ are emotional arguments.”
What to do now? Drinkle suggest translocating the three remaining caribou cows to a viable herd.
“Perhaps we should introduce a captive breeding plan” to build herd populations where they can thrive, and not just where people want them to be, she added.
“More closures are not the solution. We have so much land available,” she said. “Certainly closures are necessary in certain situations, but they are only one part of a complex problem.”