Migratory Woodland Caribou
Encyclopedia
The migratory woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou), also known as the forest caribou or woodland caribou (not to be confused with woodland reindeer, a term which also includes forest-dwelling Eurasian subspecies), is a subspecies
Subspecies
Subspecies in biological classification, is either a taxonomic rank subordinate to species, ora taxonomic unit in that rank . A subspecies cannot be recognized in isolation: a species will either be recognized as having no subspecies at all or two or more, never just one...

 of the caribou. As traditionally defined, it is found in boreal forests of Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 and far northern contiguous United States
Contiguous United States
The contiguous United States are the 48 U.S. states on the continent of North America that are south of Canada and north of Mexico, plus the District of Columbia....

, ranging from Newfoundland and Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada. Situated in the country's Atlantic region, it incorporates the island of Newfoundland and mainland Labrador with a combined area of . As of April 2011, the province's estimated population is 508,400...

 west and south to Washington, but some evidence suggests this range actually includes several subspecies
Subspecies
Subspecies in biological classification, is either a taxonomic rank subordinate to species, ora taxonomic unit in that rank . A subspecies cannot be recognized in isolation: a species will either be recognized as having no subspecies at all or two or more, never just one...

.

They live in wild herds, including the Leaf herd with 628 000 individuals and the George River herd with 385 000 individuals. The caribou generally travel upwards of 2000 km annually and live in an area of about 1 000 000 square kilometres. Some individuals have been observed traveling 6000 km in a single year.

The caribou population varies considerably, for unknown reasons, and their numbers have apparently peaked in the later decades of each of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. The most recent decline at the turn of the 20th century caused much hardship for the Inuit
Inuit
The Inuit are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada , Denmark , Russia and the United States . Inuit means “the people” in the Inuktitut language...

 and Cree
Cree
The Cree are one of the largest groups of First Nations / Native Americans in North America, with 200,000 members living in Canada. In Canada, the major proportion of Cree live north and west of Lake Superior, in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Northwest Territories, although...

 communities of Nunavik
Nunavik
Nunavik comprises the northern third of the province of Quebec, Canada. Covering a land area of 443,684.71 km² north of the 55th parallel, it is the homeland of the Inuit of Quebec...

, Quebec, who hunt them for subsistence. By 1950, as few as 5000 caribou remained in northern Quebec and Labrador.

The George River herd, south of Ungava Bay
Ungava Bay
Ungava Bay is a large bay in northeastern Canada separating Nunavik from Baffin Island. The bay is shaped like a rounded square with a side length of about and has an area of approximately...

, whose numbers reached about 800 000 towards 1993, had about 384 000 individuals in 2001. The Leaf herd in the west, near the coast of Hudson Bay
Hudson Bay
Hudson Bay , sometimes called Hudson's Bay, is a large body of saltwater in northeastern Canada. It drains a very large area, about , that includes parts of Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Alberta, most of Manitoba, southeastern Nunavut, as well as parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota,...

, has grown from 270 000 individuals in 1991 to 628 000 in 2001. Inuit, Cree and southern sport hunters kill about 30 000 caribou each year in northern Québec.

A much smaller population of migratory woodland caribou, perhaps numbering about 20 000, is found in northern Ontario
Northern Ontario
Northern Ontario is a region of the Canadian province of Ontario which lies north of Lake Huron , the French River and Lake Nipissing. The region has a land area of 802,000 km2 and constitutes 87% of the land area of Ontario, although it contains only about 6% of the population...

, on the coastal plains south of Hudson Bay
Hudson Bay
Hudson Bay , sometimes called Hudson's Bay, is a large body of saltwater in northeastern Canada. It drains a very large area, about , that includes parts of Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Alberta, most of Manitoba, southeastern Nunavut, as well as parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota,...

.

Taxonomy

Based on a review in 1961, R. t. caboti (Labrador
Labrador
Labrador is the distinct, northerly region of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It comprises the mainland portion of the province, separated from the island of Newfoundland by the Strait of Belle Isle...

 Caribou), R. t. osborni (Osborn's Caribou—from British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...

) and R. t. terraenovae (Newfoundland Caribou) were considered invalid and included in R. t. caribou. Some recent authorities have considered them all valid, even suggesting that they are quite distinct. An analysis of mtDNA in 2005 found differences between the caribous from Newfoundland, Labrador, south-western Canada and south-eastern Canada, but maintained all in R. t caribou.

Woodland Caribou in Ontario

Woodland caribou were once found throughout much of Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

's boreal forest; at the turn of the 20th century they ranged as far south as northern Wisconsin
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...

. The last permanent residents were killed in Minnesota in 1962. Despite periodic sightings of individuals south of the border the caribou range has receded approximately 34 km/decade, the manifestation of widespread range collapse and population decline. Although woodland caribou have been protected from sport hunting
Hunting
Hunting is the practice of pursuing any living thing, usually wildlife, for food, recreation, or trade. In present-day use, the term refers to lawful hunting, as distinguished from poaching, which is the killing, trapping or capture of the hunted species contrary to applicable law...

 since 1929, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada listed forest-dwelling caribou in Canada as threatened (likely to become endangered if limiting factors are not reversed) in 2000. Woodland caribou may be extinct before the year 2100 if the rate of range loss continues. There is a large herd isolated on the Slate Islands in Lake Superior
Lake Superior
Lake Superior is the largest of the five traditionally-demarcated Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded to the north by the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. state of Minnesota, and to the south by the U.S. states of Wisconsin and Michigan. It is the largest freshwater lake in the...

.

Human-caused landscape disruption is the chief cause of caribou range recession. For example, the conversion of forests by logging may result in greater abundance of other ungulates, like moose
Moose
The moose or Eurasian elk is the largest extant species in the deer family. Moose are distinguished by the palmate antlers of the males; other members of the family have antlers with a dendritic configuration...

, and increased predation by wolves. Linear corridors, such as roads, utility corridors, and trails may improve travel speed and hunting efficiency for predators, improve access for poachers, and hinder caribou movements.

Cutovers from forest harvesting have been identified as the strongest predictor of caribou extirpation. This was not surprising; the northern front of forest harvesting in Ontario closely matches the southern boundary of continuous caribou occupancy and timber harvesting may lead to reduced occurrence of woodland caribou. However, there appears to be a time lag between forest harvest and disappearance of caribou. Research suggests that there is a two decade time lag between disturbance by forest harvest and disappearance of caribou. Forest harvest converts forest stands to early seral stages, which are favoured by moose, which in turn can support a higher wolf population than caribou alone. A higher wolf population may increase predation mortality of caribou. Thus, two decades is likely the time necessary for these faunal changes to take place. This time lag is cause for concern, as there is overlap of forest harvest with the southern boundary of caribou range in Ontario. Caribou in these areas are very likely to vanish in the next 20 years. While patterns of forest harvest show the strongest relationship with caribou extirpation in Ontario, strong correlations among landscape disturbances suggest that no single variable can be unequivocally implicated as key to caribou range recession.

Logging also is a major cause of caribou mortality. Logging the mature boreal forest of northern Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

, Wisconsin
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...

, Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....

, and Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

 has led to creeping aspen/birch habitat followed by northward moving whitetail deer carrying the parasite Parelaphostrongylus tenuis
Parelaphostrongylus tenuis
Parelaphostrongylus tenuis is a small parasitic nematode that infects the brain of many ungulates. Its natural host, the white-tailed deer, is unaffected by its presence; other species, however, suffer severe neurologic damage that eventually leads to death...

. The neurological parasite is fatal to caribou and moose.

Woodland caribou persistence in Ontario will likely depend on the availability of large tracts of old growth forest situated at great distances from anthropogenic disturbance. Recent research suggests that forest harvest operations should be buffered from caribou habitat by at least 13 km.

Climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

 may have negative potential for woodland caribou as well. Climate change may further alter forest structure to favour moose and white-tailed deer
White-tailed Deer
The white-tailed deer , also known as the Virginia deer or simply as the whitetail, is a medium-sized deer native to the United States , Canada, Mexico, Central America, and South America as far south as Peru...

, which may carry the parasite Parelaphostrongylus tenuis; lethal to caribou but not harmful to deer. In addition, increased episodes of freezing rain in the winter may make it difficult for caribou to dig through the snow to reach their primary food source, lichens. The effects of climate change on woodland caribou have not been studied.

Caribou drownings at Calcaire (Limestone) Falls in 1984

In late September 1984, about 115 km south of the northern village of Kuujjuaq
Kuujjuaq, Quebec
Kuujjuaq is the largest Inuit village in Nunavik, Quebec, Canada with a population of 2,132 as of the 2006 census. This is up roughly 10% from 1,932 as of the 2001 Census. It is the administrative capital of Nunavik and lies on the western shore of the Koksoak River.Kuujjuaq previously was known...

, Québec, about 10 000 caribou (appr. 2% of the George River herd) drowned while crossing the Caniapiscau River
Caniapiscau River
The Caniapiscau River is a tributary of the Koksoak River in Nunavik, Quebec, Canada. In Cree the name of the river means rocky point.Starting from Lac Sevestre on the Canadian Shield, the Caniapiscau River flows northward through a wide, timbered glacial valley until it makes a sharp turn at its...

, immediately above the Calcaire (Limestone) Falls. The Caniapiscau River confluences with the Larch River downstream from Calcaire (Limestone) Falls to create the Koksoak River
Koksoak River
The Koksoak River is a river in northern Quebec, Canada, the largest river in the Nunavik region. The Inuit village and region's administrative center Kuujjuaq lies on the shores of the Koksoak, about south from its mouth.The name Koksoak is believed to originate from Moravian missionaries who...

 that flows into southern Ungava Bay. Although the caribou regularly criss-cross northern rivers and lakes and can swim 10 km at a stretch, northern rivers and lakes often claim lives during their annual migrations. At the time of the accident, observers raised questions about Hydro-Quebec
Hydro-Québec
Hydro-Québec is a government-owned public utility established in 1944 by the Government of Quebec. Based in Montreal, the company is in charge of the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity across Quebec....

's management of the newly built reservoir on the headwaters of the Caniapiscau River, some 450 km upstream, and focused their attention on decisions made in the days following the exceptionally heavy rains in September 1984. The Caniapiscau Reservoir
Caniapiscau Reservoir
The Caniapiscau Reservoir is a reservoir on the upper Caniapiscau River in the Côte-Nord administrative region of the Canadian province of Quebec...

 is part of the La Grande hydroelectric complex
James Bay Project
The James Bay Project is a series of hydroelectric development with a combined installed capacity of over 16,000 megawatts built since 1974 for Hydro-Québec by the on the La Grande and other rivers of Northern Quebec....

 in Northern Quebec
Nord-du-Québec
Nord-du-Québec is the largest of the seventeen administrative regions of Quebec, Canada. With , of which are lakes and rivers, it covers much of the Labrador Peninsula and about 55% of the total land surface area of Quebec....

. The waters of the upper Caniapiscau River, which flow north, were diverted into the La Grande River
La Grande River
La Grande River is a river in northwestern Quebec, Canada, which rises in the highlands of north central Quebec and flows roughly west to drain into James Bay. It is the second largest river in Quebec, surpassed only by the Saint Lawrence River....

 of the James Bay watershed to the west.

The dead caribou drifting and beginning to accumulate along the eastern shore line of the Koksoak River were first noted by the residents of Kuujjuaq, but the cause of the deaths was not confirmed until a team of wildlife biologists and technicians from the Newfoundland-Labrador Wildlife Division arrived by helicopter to participate in a joint cooperative effort with the Quebec Recreation, Hunting and Fishing Department to live-capture and radio-collar caribou swimming across the Koksoak River. Kuujjuaq residents, who were familiar with the river, reported seasonal water levels far higher than normally recorded in recent history. Autumn boat stages, shore line cabin sites and tributary beaver lodges were being flooded. While the dead caribou were thought to have drowned, confirmation was not determined until the Newfoundland-Labrador Wildlife Division used the helicopter to trace the increasingly larger accumulations of floating dead caribou back approximately 115 km upstream from Kuujjuaq to the base of Calcaire (Limestone) Falls on the Caniapiscau River. Coves and backwater were choked with the floating carcasses of dead caribou, with accumulations becoming increasingly larger in approaching the base of the Falls.

Subsequent investigation by the Québec Recreation, Hunting and Fishing Department—whose employees had also observed the dead caribou along the Koksoak River on September 30th—attempted to the conclude that a larger number of caribou would have perished had the Caniapiscau Reservoir not yet been built, since the water flow at the falls would have been even greater in the absence of the reservoir. Hydro-Quebec and SEBJ took this position, but Kuujjuaq hunters and others rejected it. Fikret Berkes wrote in 1988 that "the dispute is unlikely ever to be resolved."

In a short but savvy analysis, Quebec’s Indian and Inuit Secretariat (SIGMAI) expressed the opinion that the fast-growing George River herd may have become accustomed to the reduced water flow from 1981 to 1984, during which time the reservoir was being filled. SIGMAI hypothesizes that the caribou may have been surprised as the water flow of the Caniapiscau River was partially restored to its natural state in mid-September 1984, after the filling of reservoir had been completed. The partial release of the headwaters back into the Caniapiscau was necessary because the power stations on the La Grande River could not yet turbine the full water flow. According to Hydro-Québec, any major addition of water to the La Grande River would by necessity have been diverted around the power stations for months, even years, and seriously damage the floodgates which were designed for temporary use during exceptional climatic events.

Thus, SIGMAI chastised the Société d'énergie de la Baie James, a subsidiary of Hydro-Québec
Hydro-Québec
Hydro-Québec is a government-owned public utility established in 1944 by the Government of Quebec. Based in Montreal, the company is in charge of the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity across Quebec....

, that had just completed the construction of the reservoir, for not having planned to actively manage the restored water flow to the Caniapiscau River in such a way as to protect the caribou herd from exceptional floods caused by heavy rains or rapid spring thaw. This was a rather novel idea at the time, as no Canadian wildlife expert had foreseen anything more than the usual mortality along the rivers of the region (up to 500 deaths every year).

The Quebec game officials did, however, put forward the opinion that a dynamic management of the water levels and flows of the Caniapiscau Reservoir could have avoided the high mortality observed in September 1984, either completely, or at least reduced it to levels observed in recent years. SIGMAI finally recommended that the water levels of the reservoir be lowered by about 0.5 metre for several months of the year to avoid the use of the flood gates during extreme rainfalls when the caribou are migrating in late summer and early fall. Of course, this is largely a moot point today, since virtually no water has been diverted back into the lower Caniapiscau since 1985. Furthermore, a fence was installed to divert the herd from the danger zone near the Calcaire Falls.

In the United States

In the United States the woodland caribou is one of the most critically endangered mammals, with only a few woodland caribou found south of the Canada border each year. In the US there is only one naturally occurring herd of woodland caribou in extreme northern Idaho
Idaho
Idaho is a state in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States. The state's largest city and capital is Boise. Residents are called "Idahoans". Idaho was admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, as the 43rd state....

, eastern Washington, and British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...

, Canada, of about 40 animals. There is, however, a concerted effort on the part of the North Central Caribou Corporation and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness
Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness , is a wilderness area within the Superior National Forest in northeastern Minnesota under the administration of the U.S. Forest Service...

 to reintroduce a herd of around 75 animals from the Slate Islands in Lake Superior
Lake Superior
Lake Superior is the largest of the five traditionally-demarcated Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded to the north by the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. state of Minnesota, and to the south by the U.S. states of Wisconsin and Michigan. It is the largest freshwater lake in the...

 to northern Minnesota. However, the high incidence of whitetail deer and wolves in the region will likely prove quite problematic.

External links

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