New study authors re-examined data from 2019 study in scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), according to which the slaughter of wolves and the construction of pens to allow caribou to give birth to their young far from predators would help slow the decline of the woodland caribou.
According to them, the data examined do not demonstrate the effectiveness of methods for managing predators.
Among other things, they claim that some of the fastest-declining caribou populations are found in southern British Columbia, where wolves are not among their main predators.
No matter how the calculations are done, the statistics do not justify the slaughter of wolves and the construction of pens.
said Viktoria Wagner, assistant professor in the department of biology at the University of Alberta and co-author of the study, in a press release.
Ineffective government strategies?
New study says not only are they ineffective, but predator management strategies used by some provincial governments such as Alberta and British Columbia do not take into account all of the factors responsible for the decline of the woodland caribou .
There is a consensus that the ultimate cause of the decline of the woodland caribou is the destruction of its habitat due to deforestation and oil exploitation, as well as complex dynamics between predators and prey
says Chris Darimont, professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria in British Columbia and co-author of the study.
Forests allow caribou to protect themselves from wolves and keep them away from other prey such as elk, moose and deer. Without them, caribou must move constantly to find food, which exposes them to all kinds of dangers. Predators are just one of them
said Lee Harding, a retired Canadian Wildlife Service biologist and co-author of the study, in a press release.
Chris Darimont and colleagues question the results of the study published in the PNAS that helped give legitimacy to predator control strategies.
This made it possible to divert the little attention that was paid to the protection of habitat towards the slaughter of wolves, which, as we now know, is ineffective,
According to the Alberta government, since 2005, nearly 1,500 wolves were killed, most by poisoning or by bullets.
In an interview with Radio-Canada in January, Dave Hervieux, woodland caribou specialist with the Alberta government, argued that the wolf management program had slowed the decline of the caribou almost instantly
, but that it is not a solution durable
.
The British Columbia caribou provincial recovery plan report for 2017-2018 indicates that the province has provided $ 2 million to the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation to support habitat restoration projects caribou.
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