Woodland Caribou are an iconic Canadian species and they are in real trouble. 

Woodland caribou are beautiful creatures, perfectly adapted to Canada’s forests. With their large hooves, they ‘crater’ through winter snow to find lichen to eat, and move over wetlands and snowpack that other animals cannot easily cross. They live in old growth forests and peat wetland areas, which other prey species such as deer and moose avoid. That’s how caribou have been able to live alongside natural predators like wolves and bears for thousands of years.

Even if most of us never see majestic wild caribou, we know it is important that they thrive.

What happened?

For more than forty years conservationists have been calling upon government and industry to work with resource communities, First Nations and environmental groups to protect caribou and their habitat and to diversify economic opportunities in resource dependent areas.

Despite repeated assurances of protective actions from government and industry, resource extraction impacts kept increasing, pushing caribou in many areas to the brink of extinction. In 2012 Environment Canada committed to carry out a long-overdue national caribou recovery strategy and gave provinces five years to develop range management plans to reach at least minimum caribou habitat requirements over time. Alberta missed the 2017 deadline.

In 2020, to avoid a federal habitat protection order, Alberta signed an agreement with the federal government, committing to finish its caribou range plans by 2025. The plans must coordinate cutblocks, access routes and other infrastructure to enable sustainable resource development and achieve caribou habitat objectives over time.

Alberta approved its first two range plans – for Cold Lake (in northeast AB) and Bistcho (in northwest AB) – in April 2022, four months behind the new schedule. These plans slowly move Alberta towards cumulative effects management down the road; they lack strong actions in the crucial first decade to maintain and restore caribou critical habitat, and lack measures to support Indigenous land-use goals including Indigenous Protected and Conserved areas.

Now Alberta needs strong encouragement to  approve and implement timely, effective plans for healthy caribou populations, forests and communities.

Time is running out!