Province Announces Plan to Save Mountain Caribou
By 250 News
Working with stakeholders including, First Nations,the forest industry,conservationists, a heli-skiing tour operator and snowmobile associations, the Province off B.C. has announced a special 7 point plan to try and restore the number of Mountain Caribou in B.C.
Prince George North MLA and Minister of Agriculture and Lands, Pat Bell says the announcement comes as a result of years of collaborative work "I particularly commend the Mountain Caribou Project for their significant contributions to this process. For the past three years, they have been deeply involved in building this collaborative solution, and we all look forward to its implementation on the ground."
- Protect 2.2 million hectares of mountain caribou range from logging and road building, capturing 95 per cent of the caribou’s high suitability winter habitat. This will lead to a growth of approximately 380,000 hectares of protected forest within mountain caribou range.
- Manage human recreational activities in mountain caribou habitat in a manner that ensures critical habitat areas are effectively protected.
- Manage predator populations of wolf and cougar where they are preventing the recovery of mountain caribou populations.
- Manage the primary prey of caribou predators.
- Boost caribou numbers in threatened herds with animals transplanted from elsewhere to ensure herds achieve critical mass for self-sufficiency.
- Support adaptive management and research and implement effective monitoring plans for habitat, recreation and predator-prey management.
- Institute a cross-sector progress board in spring 2008 to monitor the effectiveness of recovery actions.
Region | 2006 Population (est) | Target Population |
Hart Ranges | 717 | 717 |
Upper Fraser | 307 | 366 |
Quesnel Highland | 262 | 381 |
Mount Robson | 0 | -- |
Wells-Gray/Thompson | 274 | 326 |
Kinbasket | 2 | -- |
Revelstoke Shuswap | 205 | 363 |
South Monashee | 8 | -- |
Central Kootenay | 94 | 227 |
Southwest Kootenay | 37 | 91 |
Southeast Kootenay | 20 | 159 |
The legend on the map at the top of the page may not be easy to read, so for clarity, Mount Robson, Kinbasket, and South Monashee will be status quo, meaning exisiting land use commitments recreation and hunting policies will remain in place.
Wells Gray - Thompson, Revelstoke-Shuswap. Central Kootenay and Southeast Kootenay are in the region labeled "Assist to Long Term Sudtaining, "Achieve a population that is able to withstand random events and is sufficiently large and widespread to ensure regular exchange of animals with other planning units".
The Hart Ranges, Upper Fraser and Quesnel Highland are all in the Self Sustaining area, "Restoring and maintaining habitat conditions that allow mountain caribou populations within planning units to withstand random events and other environmental variables without the need for long term predator-prey management."
Southwest Kootenay is the only area listed in the Maintain with Resilience category : "Maintain or increase a planning unit population to 75 - 100 animals"
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Posted by: acrider54 on October 17 2007 6:06 AM
The Hart Range herds will again be the target for picking up transplants, just like last time. A small herd of 60 to 80 caribou was rounded up and held at Penny for shipment to southern BC and the US border states a couple decades ago. 25% of the caribou died in the pens or in transit. The rest died from predation and failure to adapt. At the end of the day there was 100% mortality.
There is a web site somewhere that had pictures of the mess at Penny.
I don't believe a transplant from the local herds should be allowed again. Probably the only ones that can prevent that mess would the local indian bands. I hope they are playing attention.
Another phenomena we are seeing is caribou herds near snowmobiles areas tend to do quite well for some reason, while herds that are in parks or non motorized areas are rapidly dying off. The failure of pristine locations to retain their caribou has created great discomfort for those that want to ban snowmobiling. But dispite that discomfort caribou science teams are determined to keep snowmobiles and caribou apart. No one knows if this will hasten the demise of the caribou, but it appears the science team is willing to take that chance.
Given the current stable population of caribou here I don't expect any snowmobile areas around PG to be restricted. But if there is another caribou round up, and the resulting loss of animals, it may cause the Caribou Recovery Group to blame snowmobiles and impose restrictions.
The world is a changing, and snowmobilers need to stick together to avoid losing our sport. Join a club and stay informed. Caribou recovery is vital for us, so learn what you should be doing in the mountains to make sure the caribou continue to survive in our snowmobile areas.