British Columbia faces extreme protections to help the caribou, which would decimate the economies of towns like Revelstoke – prompting a ‘moral crisis’

On 15 April, with less than a week’s notice, 700 people squeezed into a community center in Revelstoke, British Columbia, for a last-minute meeting with Canadian government officials. Snowmobilers, skiers, loggers, activists, berry-pickers and business owners were all drawn there to discuss the threat of a widespread closure to the mountains that are the lifeblood of this community.

At stake: three herds of caribou. Or, potentially, the entire town.

British Columbia is rushing to put plans in place to manage the endangered woodland caribou before the Canadian federal government loses patience and invokes the most extreme protections across herd ranges, which would likely involve year-round blanket closures to the mountains to protect caribou habitat. Such mass closures would decimate the economies of neighboring small towns, like Revelstoke, that depend on those same mountains for tourism and resource extraction, like logging.

This debate leaves residents with a troubling question: how much are they expected to sacrifice to save a dying species?

A recently released UN report reveals that the planet is on the brink of the sixth mass extinction. Caribou have long been a symbol of the north, once roaming in vast herds and numbering at least 40,000 in BC alone. Known as “grey ghosts” for their elusive nature, they are in danger of becoming literal ghosts: in May 2018, the federal government declared that the remaining southern mountain population of woodland caribou in the country’s western reaches faced an “imminent threat” to survival. The South Selkirk caribou herd that roamed the US border disappeared earlier this year, taking with it the last caribou from the lower 48. And many of the herds left in Canada have too few animals for a likely chance at long-term survival.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A photo of the now extirpated South Selkirk caribou herd. Photograph: Jim Lawrence

Environmental groups are in favor of more extreme measures to save the disappearing animals. “In the meantime, the logging and road building and recreation activities continue,” Candace Batycki, program director with Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y), says of some of the main issues threatening caribou, in addition to climate change and increased predation.

The environmental group has called for increased recovery efforts, because scientists have identified caribou as the most critical terrestrial umbrella species in North America. Caribou rely on large tracts of old-growth forests for their main food source of arboreal lichen. Old-growth forests are havens for a vast array of other animal and plant life, so caribou conservation acts as an umbrella to ensure the survival of large numbers of other species that are too difficult to manage for on an individual basis, such as insects, mosses, lichens and birds like the pileated woodpecker.

There are some perverse incentives on the table here. If you get rid of caribou, then you don’t have a problem Candace Batycki

“There are some perverse incentives on the table here,” said Batycki. “If you get rid of caribou, then you don’t have a problem – you can log, snowmobile, heliski, do whatever you want.”

Y2Y has been dismissed derisively by many locals as an outside environmental group with blinders on.

“We’re all environmentalists,” said Teena Rumak, general manager of the Revelstoke Snowmobile Club, which some might say has a vested interest in this debate. The Boulder-Frisby-Queest caribou herd range is also the most popular snowmobiling zone in BC. People travel from all over to snowmobile, generating $30m a year in tourism dollars for this tiny community. “No one wants to see the caribou disappear. In fact, we’ve worked hard to protect them.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Evolution has gifted mountain caribou with a flexible ankle joint which enables the animal to spread its weight over a larger area and not sink far in deep snow. Photograph: Jim Lawrence

Snowmobilers are often stereotyped as “redneck motorheads” with no regard for the environment. But over a decade ago, the Revelstoke Snowmobile Club implemented a voluntary closure on Frisby Ridge to protect the tiny herd of 11 animals, and still sends volunteers to patrol the closure boundaries. This deliberate closure was in addition to dozens of government-mandated closures in the mid-2000s across the mountains north of Revelstoke to protect the Columbia North herd of 147 caribou – the only herd in the region with a real chance of survival. In combination with other tactics, these closures helped to halt decline and stabilize that herd’s numbers.

Snowmobiling might be a cornerstone of this mountain town, but Revelstoke was literally built on timber, with sawmills going as far back as the 1880s. The town’s current mill, Downie Timber, employs 300 people, a significant percentage for a town of just under 7,000. It prides itself on using the whole of every log, even burning the bark for energy that powers parts of the mill and some local buildings.

Downie receives its lumber from the city-owned Revelstoke Community Forest Corporation (RCFC), which channels proceeds back into the town for community initiatives, scholarships and projects. RCFC’s operation overlaps with the Columbia North caribou herd range. RCFC already protected nearly 25,000 acres in its tenure in the mid-2000s along with those snowmobile closures to aid in caribou recovery. If the federal government invokes an emergency protection order for caribou, RCFC estimates that an additional 90% of its operable area would be shut down – a potentially devastating impact to this community of foresters, loggers and mill workers.

“It’s not like anyone did this to the caribou,” said Darcy Peel, director of BC’s provincial caribou recovery program. He is referring to yet another challenge facing the endangered animals: flooding and massive cuts for power lines from the many dams along the Columbia River, including the Revelstoke Dam that was constructed in the 80s.

“We developed the land in the way we wanted to benefit from it, and those benefits paid for schools, roads, energy to power our hospitals, timber to build our homes and families to have good jobs,” Peel said. “Now we’re seeing there are consequences to the way we altered the landscape.”

Now we’re seeing there are consequences to the way we altered the landscape Darcy Peel

While those consequences are landing most heavily on the small towns asked to make the most immediate and biggest sacrifices, the benefits of landscape-level alteration extend far beyond: BC’s timber goes to construct urban buildings, the Columbia River’s dams to power US cities, Canada’s oil and gas to drive cars and heat homes, bucket-list tourism to beautiful places – elevating the question of saving Canada’s caribou to an international issue.

Dr Robert Serrouya is a biologist whose research has informed recovery efforts in this area for years. Hehas researched tactics that have been successfully utilized to stabilize declining herds over a 56,000 sq mile area across eastern BC and western Alberta, including moving small herds to join larger ones, fencing off areas to protect calves and culling predators like wolves and cougars. This last tactic has been highly controversial.

“Every solution impacts someone’s values,” sighed Peel, providing a window into how unenviable his job is between navigating the federal government, provincial government, First Nations tribes and local communities, all while managing plans to recover caribou. The biggest call from people in these mountain towns to Peel, he says, is to be allowed a seat at the table before the government decides their fate.

The immediate future for caribou remains hazy, with no public timeline for when BC has to deliver on a recovery agreement before the federal government invokes an emergency order under the Species at Risk Act. With Canada’s federal election in the fall, the handling of these animals – and the future of these communities – may take center stage or, more likely, will be used as nothing more than a political football.

“We’re students of extinction,” said Batycki. “I feel we need to look deeply at ourselves. Are we going to change our behavior at all? On all levels – the individual backcountry user, community forester, the mill worker and, of course, the government. It’s a moral crisis. We’re about to see morally what we’re made of.”