Enhancing Caribou Survival in the Klinse-Za Herd: Year 9
This multi-year project aims to enhance the survival rate of caribou cows and calves in the Klinse-Za and Scott East herds.
Maternity penning was used to successfully arrest population decline and avoid the extirpation of the Klinse-Za caribou herd. Having achieved that, the goal of this project is now population supplementation to offset low wild-calf recruitment and maintain a positive population trend.
Pregnant cow caribou will be captured in early March and transported to a protective pen located in natural calving range. The cows will be fed and monitored through late July, until calves have grown to a point where they are less susceptible to predation by wolves and bears, and then released back to the wild.
Indigenous-led Caribou Conservation from David Moskowitz on Vimeo.
Update: 17 calves released from caribou maternity pen
There were more caribou inside the maternity pen on Mount Bickford this year than the entire Klinse-Za herd population back in 2014!
Seventeen calves were released in mid-August, along with 20 cows. It is the project’s most successful season in its nine-year history.
The secure maternity pen and careful monitoring by Saulteau and West Moberly guardians have helped the Klinse-Za caribou herd triple in size over the past decade.
Executive Summary
Mountain caribou across British Columbia are declining, with many populations classified as threatened or endangered. While predation is an important factor in the observed declines, little to no consideration has been given to individual or population-level health, until very recently. In this study, we launched an investigation of health in the Central Mountain Klinse-Za caribou herd, whose precipitous decline down to 16 individuals launched a suite of emergency recovery measures in 2014, including a protective maternity pen project. Our primary objectives for this study were to: 1) evaluate the baseline health parameters of the Klinse-Za/ScottE caribou herd, and 2) test for possible effects of penning on caribou health, using physiological stress, pathogen prevalence, serum biochemistry, and trace nutrients as our indices. We analyzed 488 fecal samples collected during the 2017 and 2018 calving season, and 56 blood serum samples collected during March capture in 2014 – 2018. We found that fecal cortisol levels in penned and free-ranging cows are fairly similar pre-calving, but increase significantly after calving; cortisol levels in free-ranging animals (median 136 ng/g, range 18.7 – 1273.3 ng/g) was significantly higher than in penned animals (median 90 ng/g, range 17.3 – 687.7 ng/g). We did not find a relationship between the number of times a cow has been penned and her average pre-calving or post-calving fecal cortisol level. Hair cortisol levels in the Klinse-Za were higher than in Omineca or boreal subpopulations, but also did not show any effects of increased stress with repeated penning. Hair cortisol was slightly higher among cows that had an abortion or a stillbirth compared to cows that delivered a live calf. Seroprevalence of antibodies to the herpes virus 1 in penned cows was 22.2%, Neospora caninum was 8%, and Erysipelothrix rhusiopathiae was either 13.4% or 26.7% in 2018, depending on which of two recommended thresholds was considered.
Click the provincial database link below to read the full final report for this project.