By Sarah Stone

Identifying critical caribou habitat in Boreal Shield difficult

Apr 15, 2013 | 6:08 AM

The area encompassing more than 18 million hectares in northern Saskatchewan is making it difficult for environmental officials to identify critical habitat for the boreal caribou in their Boreal Caribou Recovery Strategy.

This area, known as the “boreal shield”, is the only range in Canada that biologists could not identify.

“We’ve identified critical habitat in 50 of the 51 [ranges] and the one that we haven’t is in the range called the ‘boreal shield’, which is in northern Saskatchewan and the we reason that we haven’t identified critical habitat there yet is because it’s in a rather unique situation where it has very high levels of fire and very low levels of human disturbance,” said wildlife biologist with Environment Canada Greg Wilson.

Wilson explained they have done a lot of modelling on how much critical habitat is required in every range, but because of the boreal shield they weren’t sure if they could apply this model for this circumstance.

“What’s being done is an attempt to try to get more population data for the northern Saskatchewan caribou such as size and trend and identify critical habitat by 2016,” he explained.

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This is where the province comes into play. Planning and studying of land management, natural resources and wildlife will be conducted by Saskatchewan government officials. In the 2013 budget the Boreal Caribou Research Project received $250,000 to do just that.

“The $250,000 will basically allow us to partner with industry, with NGOs, as well as the Aboriginal groups, academia and then [with] federal government to design and conduct the necessary studies to determine the status of boreal caribou population and their habitat in the province,” said Yeen Ten Hwang, acting manager for the Science and Assessment Unit at the Fish and Wildlife branch.

In May 2012 the Ministry of Environment established a “Woodland Caribou Technical Committee”, which consists of researchers from the ministry, multiple universities, Parks Canada and Environment Canada who are responsible for the guidance and direction for all the woodland caribou in Saskatchewan.

This year, with the new funding, the committee can go forward with several studies of threatened species.

Hwang said due to the lack of human disturbance in this boreal shield she feels the caribou population are “doing well”, but continued on to say they need proof to be certain.

“One of the studies is looking at population dynamics and critical habitat identification of [boreal] woodland caribous in the boreal shield of Saskatchewan and then there’s another study that we’re going to start up looking at the population genetic structure of caribou within its current range and that’s using fecal DNA,” Hwang described.

She said they also want to use the funding to support work which will incorporate Aboriginal traditional knowledge understanding the historical and current distribution of the boreal caribou in the province.

“Before we would start the study we have an engagement process where we are going to go out to the communities around the areas where the animals are going to be affected to talk to communities to tell them why we’re doing it, what is the purpose of it, what is it that they can get out of it and also how they can help and participate in some of the research.”

The country’s Boreal Caribou Recovery Strategy was officially passed in 2012 and Wilson said it will take “a number of years” before the entire population is self-sustaining.

“We have to re-look at the Recovery Strategy and the progress we make in the Recovery Strategy every five to 10 years, so it’s nothing something where we say ‘OK now we’re done this year’ unless we’ve actually have managed to D-list boreal caribou. It’s a long process.”

sstone@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahstone84