A caribou that was part of the Southern Selkirks herd, which
once traversed the U.S.-Canada border. Biologists captured the last
member of the herd this week.
David Moskowitz
The contiguous United States just lost its last wild caribou
The last caribou known to inhabit the contiguous United States
has been removed from the wild. This week, a team of biologists working
for the Canadian province of British Columbia captured the caribou—a
female—in the Selkirk Mountains just north of the U.S.-Canada border.
They then moved it to a captive rearing pen near Revelstoke as part of a controversial, last-ditch effort
to preserve highly endangered herds. The female caribou is believed to
be the last member of the last herd to regularly cross into the lower 48
states from Canada.
The 14 January capture of the caribou was “like losing a piece of the
tribe in some way,” says Bart George, a wildlife biologist for the
Kalispel tribe in Usk, Washington. It is one of two indigenous nations
in the United States that have been pushing governments to maintain the
cross-border caribou herd and protect its habitat.
In about a month, the British Columbia biologists plan to release the
caribou—along with two other animals from another endangered herd—back
into the wild, into a larger and more stable Canadian herd. The ultimate
fate of these animals, however, is unclear. They are mountain caribou, a
distinct ecotype of caribou found only in a forested swath of
northwestern North America, which have become endangered because of
habitat loss and other factors. Conservation efforts have failed to
reverse population declines or prevent the complete extirpation of some
herds at the southern end of the mountain caribou’s range, where they
inhabit inland temperate rainforests. And biologists can’t say whether
any caribou will again inhabit the continental United States. (There are
herds of other types of caribou in Alaska.)
Battles over mountain caribou recovery have spanned decades.
George, along with many conservationists, believes officials in British
Columbia are looking for a way out of having to protect dwindling
southern populations. Province officials dispute that idea. But critics
note they have failed to develop management strategies for some southern
herds, despite direction from the Canadian government calling for their
restoration under the federal Species at Risk Act.
Conservationists also fear removing caribou from the wild will
ultimately lead to the lifting of protections for its habitat,
especially if the animals never return. Both British Columbia and the
United States have identified and protected large areas of “core
habitat” for mountain caribou. But adjacent lands, especially in British
Columbia, have continued to be heavily logged, contributing to caribou
declines.
It works like this: The disturbance benefits populations of other
hoofed animals, such as moose and deer, which in turn attract predators
such as wolves and mountain lions. The predators then spill over into
the remaining patches of protected habitat, where they feed on caribou.
Because of that dynamic, it is not clear whether “it will be possible to
recover some of those herds,” says wildlife biologist Aaron Reid of
British Columbia’s forests ministry in Penticton, which is responsible
for caribou conservation. “The habitat may be too far gone.”
Provincial officials say they have no current plans to remove caribou
habitat protections for the southern herds. But, “It’s hard to believe
that,” says Candace Batycki, a program director at the Yellowstone to
Yukon Conservation Initiative in Nelson, Canada. That’s because the
province has lifted protections in the past after other caribou herds
became extirpated and officials deemed it impossible to restore them.
What hangs in the balance, observers say, is not just the survival of
a unique caribou population, but also the ecological integrity of the
entire inland temperate rainforest. “The protections on core habitat for
caribou are an umbrella, huge umbrella, that protect so many other
species,” Reid says. “That’s the big story.”
Correction, 17 January 2019, 6:00 p.m.: The
headline and story incorrectly characterized the caribou as the last in
the continental United States. It was the last in the contiguous United
States.
doi:10.1126/science.aaw7110
David Moskovitz
David Moskovitz is a photographer and journalist based in Winthrop, Washington. He is the author of Caribou Rainforest: From Heartbreak to Hope (Mountaineers Books/Braided River, 2018).
