Valhalla Wilderness Watch
Slaughtering wolves from helicopters, transplanting healthy animals to areas with little viable habitat left, where they are quickly killed by predators; some of our smallest and most endangered herds of mountain caribou are receiving intensive efforts to boost their numbers.
These quick fixes are disguising the widespread failure of B.C.’s Recovery Plan — and the failure of the B.C. government to correct the sellouts that have compromised the plan.
When the plan was announced in 2008, B.C. had an estimated 1,885 mountain caribou. The stated goal was to increase caribou numbers to 2,500 within 20 years; but today, with more than one-third of the time passed, the government says there are only about 1,500 left.
In the Wells Gray-North Thompson unit, the Groundhog caribou population dropped by 74 per cent between 2008 and 2011, from 23 animals down to six.
Overall, the Wells Gray-North Thompson Unit had 274 caribou in 2007, but the 2011 census could only find 172 animals. There is evidence that some of these losses may be due to heavy snowmobile use.
The Recovery Plan’s Snowmobile Management Agreements (SMA’s) allow snowmobile clubs to develop plans to voluntarily stay out of caribou habitat and monitor themselves. This program has miserably failed.
In the North Thompson area snowmobile trespasses have been recorded in the Foam Creek and the North Blue River closure zones.
In the North Thompson area, the government is permitting the snowmobile clubs to maintain groomed snowmobile trails that give wolves easy access to critical caribou habitat.
Mountain caribou are tragically disappearing, and the government is shamelessly using wolves as a scapegoat for what it hasn’t done to protect the caribou.