A Little Context for the Demand for Predator Controls

June 20th 2007

Revelstoke Times Review, Page 0010, 20-Jun-2007

The recent caribou article in The Times Review (Council seeks predator controls to save caribou, on page 14 of the June 13 issue)is bound to get people excited, especially when a term like predator control is used. So I thought some context would be helpful.

The BC Mountain Caribou Science Team was asked to provide options to try to recover caribou. Those options included:

1) Self sustaining (SS). This means that after a period of recovery, caribou would not need intensive management (transplants, captive rearing, predator management, prey management) in the long term. The SS option would require no logging in caribou habitat (most of the Interior wet belt forest), and very little logging in deer/moose winter range adjacent to caribou habitat (much of the BC interior). No logging is mentioned because historically these forests were dominated by old trees since it rains a lot and they don't burn often (unlike the Okanagan).

2) Self Sustaining with Assistance (SSA; nicknamed assisted living). SSA means that logging would be permitted in the deer/moose winter range adjacent to caribou habitat, and depending on which caribou herd, there would be no or much reduced logging in the caribou habitat itself. But predator/prey management would have to exist, probably forever, but at a limited level.

3) Maintain with Resilience: Logging would be allowed in and around caribou habitat, but 40 per cent of the old forest would have to be retained unlogged (this is current management). Here predator/prey management would have to be intensive, and continuous.

Now here is the tricky part: Regardless of whether the provincial government chooses option 1, 2, or 3, predation risk will have to be reduced a lot in the short term, because the fragmented forest, roads, and young forest (shrubs) will be here for at least 20 years, and there is no quick fix to this problem. Shrubs grow vigorously in cut blocks, and these provide food for moose and deer, which provides more food for wolves and cougars, which is bad for caribou. This means that if people want to save caribou, predators will have to be reduced somehow, at least for the short term. But no one wants predator management forever, because to most people that is unethical.

Some people argue that predator management would be more palatable with increased habitat protection. Others argue that 40 per cent of the merchantable forest in caribou habitat has been protected for 12 years, how about some action on the predation front?

The science team doesn't advocate option 1, 2, or 3, we simply provide the options, and it is for government and the public to decide which one (there is also option 4, status-quo, which is almost guaranteed extinction). However, we also point out that as we move from option 1 to 3, risks to caribou increase, and management and monitoring costs increase greatly.

Finally, just some facts on risk: Bears are the greatest predators of adult caribou provincially, but they are not targets for management because their numbers don't fluctuate with moose and deer, they are probably at similar levels to historic, and a lot of innocent bears would have to be affected to save one caribou.

On the other hand, here in the Revelstoke area, cougars were a major predator of caribou. And since 2000, when moose populations increased greatly, wolves became the second greatest source of mortality (behind bears), once you account for sampling effort. Based in part on this summary, the City of Revelstoke wrote a letter to the BC Government asking for action.

Robert Serrouya
Revelstoke

Rob Serrouya is a member of the BC Mountain Caribou Science Team and a caribou researcher in Revelstoke.

Copyright 2007 revelstoke