We have to look after this animal, I know when I lived up in Fort St. John there are herds north of town and the Oil and forestry are really doing a number on them. In the winter Caribou eat "lichens" and that food source is slowly disappearing due to development out in the boonies.Canada's declining herds of woodland caribou will only survive if governments move to protect large tracts of northern forest from industrial development, conservation groups warn.
Only about 184,000 of the shy, elusive animals remain in small groups scattered in remote areas of mature and old-growth forest.
Without government action now, the species could disappear from Alberta within decades and in Ontario by the end of the century, says a new report by the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club of Canada.
"The species remains extremely vulnerable to industrial landscape pressures such as logging, mining and oil and gas explorations," says the report obtained by the Canadian Press.
"If development continues to push into intact forest areas used by woodland caribou, these boreal icons could become extinct."
Woodland caribou are also in decline in other provinces and territories from Yukon to Newfoundland.
The report calls on governments to create networks of interconnected permanently protected areas within current caribou ranges.
Resource development policies should be improved to reduce the cumulative impact of roads, pipelines and seismic lines on forests and the animals.
Ecosystem conservation, including protecting caribou habitat, must become part of land use planning as governments and industry rush to exploit boreal forests that have so far remained untouched.
Gillian McEachern, one of the report's authors, said woodland caribou have already lost about half of their range over the past 100 years.
In the Cariboo region of BC and the Kootney area Caribou are all but gone. Very few remain. I have pictures I will post once I ever get a scanner of these animals I took on the side of the Alaska Highway North of Wonowon, near Pink Mountain.
Read the rest here