• We are here today to announce two initiatives. •The first is the conservation strategy for southern mountain caribou in Canada’s national parks •At Parks Canada, we’ve been studying and managing caribou for many years, but this is our first comprehensive invitations to Canadians to view our program and work with us towards caribou recovery in the Mountain National Parks • This comprehensive program includes many management actions including seasonal area closures to protect caribou habitat, protection of caribou habitat from fire, managing the relationships between predators and the various prey species that relate to caribou population dynamics and directly recovering small caribou populations in the parks • related to this last action, we are also announcing a significant new partnership with the Calgary Zoo, Government of BC and Government of Alberta to use captive bred caribou to reinforce small caribou populations in Jasper, Mount Revelstoke and Glacier national parks, and to reintroduce caribou to Banff national park
1
•Today we are discussing the conservation of southern mountain caribou. • these are a population of Woodland Caribou that are found exclusively in the mountainous regions of southern Alberta and British Columbia • They are distinct for their behaviour of migrating elevationally by season, spending their summers in remote, high alpine meadows and their winters in areas of deep snow in lower valley regions • Like their cousins, the Boreal Caribou, their movements have been interpreted by scientists to be adapted to avoiding deer species (elk, moose and deer) that bring with them predators such as bears and wolves
2
•Southern mountain caribou were listed under SARA as threatened in 2002. This means that they were considered likely to become endangered if nothing is done to reverse the factors leading to its extirpation or extinction. • Thus Parks Canada has been working to reverse those factors
3
• the condition that we find caribou populations in today is poor.
4
5
6
• this leads us to the development and release of our Conservation Strategy for Southern Mountain Caribou in Canada’s National Parks
7
• This is a Parks Canada document developed after several years of research with scientists in Canada and the US, consultation with government and aboriginal partners, meetings with park users and monitoring by Parks Canada biologists. • It has been prepared in response to commitments from the management plans from the mountain national parks • Parks Canada is committed to taking specific actions and has allocated special funding to recovering caribou on our lands • This is not a recovery strategy. • Environment Canada has been assigned the task of preparing the recovery strategy for SM caribou and we are participating in that process
8
• The strategy addresses five key threats that have been identified as posing the greatest danger to caribou populations in national parks • Altered predator prey dynamics • dense populations of elk and deer in national parks, in part created by their access to towns and campgrounds, subsidizes predator populations, these same predators that prey on caribou • Predator access • our winter recreational activities can create packed trails that lead to caribou habitat. This makes it easier for wolves to access caribou herds and elevates mortality in a season where caribou should be safe from predation • Direct disturbance • this ranges from hikers displacing caribou from preferred areas during sensitive times of the year to caribou being killed on the highways that run through parks • Habitat loss • habitat loss takes many forms, but in national parks is largely the result of wildfires that destroy caribou habitat and create habitat for elk, deer and moose • Small population effects • like many of the creatures found on the Species at Risk list, once caribou populations reach low levels, they tend to decline rather than increase. As
9
well, when small they are at greater risk of genetic bottlenecks and natural disasters.
9
• not all threats are found in all the national parks with caribou populations • hence our conservation and management approach differs among parks • in Mount Revelstoke and Glacier national parks, habitat loss and direct disturbance are prominent threats • hence here Parks Canada is expanding a winter closure on Mt. Klotz to protect the transboundary herd that depends on this habitat
10
• In Jasper National Park, facilitating predator access to caribou winter habitat is a prominent threat • in response we have closed the Cavell area that is used by the Tonquin caribou herd to winter use until late winter when the snow conditions make off-trail travel by wolves similar to on-trail
11
• study of wolf encounter rates to determine how trails and roads contribute to predation on caribou • study of how burned landscapes influence the viability of caribou populations • analysis of caribou population viability – how many animals do we need in a herd to attain growth and sustainabilty
12
• ongoing habitat protection • increased analysis of visitor activities and conservation • ongoing research and monitoring – scat collection to replace collaring • conservation breeding and reintroduction / reinforcement in cooperation with the Calgary Zoo and BC
13
• the purpose of this new conservation strategy is to engage the Canadian public on the issue of caribou conservation and the management steps needed to protect caribou in our National Parks • we invite your feedback on our approaches as well as encourage Canadians to contact us if they are looking for more information • as well as feedback on our overall strategy, we are interested in hearing your views on this new partnership with the provincial governments and calgary zoo to use conservation breeding to restore wild populations of caribou to national parks. • Our program is focused on using all effective conservation tools towards caribou conservation and recovery. We will continue to work with all Canadians to achieve this challenging but worthwhile goal
14