Media Centre

Backgrounder: Caribou fact sheet

 

Media release - Oct 26, 2010 - North America’s Caribou at Critical Juncture - Aboriginal Knowledge Keepers and Western Scientists Come Together To Tackle Problem of Declines in North American Caribou Populations

Caribou fact sheet

Caribou, called reindeer in Europe, are ungulates, members of the deer family.

Woodland caribou are important to northern Aboriginal communities that rely on them for food and clothing and cultural survival

Caribou populations

Canada supports perhaps the largest woodland caribou population in the world, but the species is in decline globally and has lost about half of its North American range .

There are more than 2.4 million caribou in Canada. Some dwell in forests (woodland), some in mountains, some migrate each year between the sparse forests and tundra (barren-ground) of the far north, and others remain on the tundra all year.

According to a 2009 study, herd populations were down 57 per cent from their maximum population over roughly the past 20 years.

The species has been lost from PEI, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia and the eastern United States. The largest proportion of Boreal woodland caribou range is found in Quebec (28%) and Ontario (19%). The least amount of range lies within British Columbia (1%).

Caribou populations by province and territory

• Alberta - more than 2,000, or 6%, of Canada’s threatened boreal Woodland caribou
• British Columbia - supports approximately 1,000, or 3%, of Canada’s threatened boreal Woodland caribou population
• Manitoba - supports approximately 2,500, or 7%, of Canada’s threatened boreal Woodland caribou population and supports more than 700,000 Barren ground caribou within two herds that overlap with Northwest Territories, Alberta and Saskatchewan.
• Newfoundland and Labrador - supports more than 3,000, or 9%, of Canada’s threatened boreal Woodland caribou population.
• Northwest Territories - supports more than 6,000, or 17%, of Canada’s threatened boreal Woodland caribou and 100,000 Barren ground caribou
• Nunavut - supports more than 6,000, or 17%, of Canada’s threatened boreal Woodland caribou and 100,000 Barren ground caribou
• Ontario - supports approximately 5,000, or 16%, of Canada’s threatened boreal Woodland caribou population
• Quebec - supports more than 25% of Canada’s Woodland caribou and significant herds of Barren ground caribou (once numbering more than a million caribou but now greatly reduced).
• Saskatchewan - supports more than 4,000, or 13%, of Canada’s threatened boreal Woodland caribou population
• Yukon - supports more than 120,000 Barren ground caribou

Primary threats

“Across the Far North, populations of caribou — an indispensable source of food and clothing for indigenous people — are in steep decline. Scientists point to rising temperatures and a resource-development boom as the prime culprits.”
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/a_troubling_decline_in_the_caribou_herds_of_the_arctic_/2321/

The primary threat facing the Boreal population of woodland caribou is range disturbance.

Loss of older forest and wetland habitat by timber harvest, fire, or other industrial activity increases the availability of younger vegetation with sufficient biomass to support moose and deer populations.

Compounding the problem are linear disturbances (roads, transmission lines, pipelines, and seismic lines), which facilitate wolf access to interior forest, which increases predation pressure faced by caribou.

Climate change also poses a big problem. Climate change has been predicted to increase fire rates by as much as 300-500% in parts of Canada’s Boreal region this century . More fire will increase the abundance of younger forest and therefore the predation pressure faced by caribou.

Because woodland caribou are at high risk from predators, they have a low tolerance of habitat disturbance.
Knowledge systems

Many gaps in woodland caribou knowledge remain. Answering these questions requires both western science and indigenous ecological knowledge (IEK).

Links and maps

Boreal Caribou Habitat Maps

Working together to recover boreal caribou – Environment Canada

Footnotes

1. J.A. Schaefer. 2003. Long-term range recession and the persistence of caribou in the Taiga. Conservation Biology 17(5):1435-1439.
2. Hinterland Who’s Who – Mammal Fact Sheet: Caribou - http://www.hww.ca/hww2.asp?id=85.
   Global declines of caribou and reindeer, Liv Solveig Vors, Mark Stephen Boyce. 9 MAY 2009 Globe Change Biology. http://bit.ly/ctZ0H9
3. Environment Canada. 2008. Scientific Review for the Identification of Critical Habitat for Woodland Caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou), Boreal Population, in Canada. August 2008 and The CircumArtic Rangifer Monitoring & Assessment Network. Accessed August, 2009. www.carmanetwork.com
4. Balshi, M.S., A.D. McGuire, P. Duffy, M. Flannigan, J. Walsh, and J.M. Melillo, 2009. Modeling historical and future area burned of western boreal North America using a Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS) approach.
5. Global Change Biology, 15(3): 578-600, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2486.2008.01679.x.

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For further information, contact:
Suzanne Fraser, 613-552-7277, sfraser <at> borealcanada.ca