Protecting woodland caribou is a big item in the central-southerly, somewhat eastern areas of BC. The Revelstoke area is one of the districts with snowmobile restrictions, to keep from disturbing the caribou. A winter food item of caribou is the bulky, black lichen that hangs from old growth, often overmature, evergreen trees. Thus, the battle rages on, with the granola eating, tree hugging hikers on one side, attempting to stop all logging and developement of every type. This side is backed by many younger, newly trained biologists.
On the other side are people who have to eat, need a place to live, and this can only come about if there are paying jobs in the area. The forest industry has traditionally been the lifeline of support for the areas in question. Ironically, the environmental side is supported by vast sums of money from donations, often from such sources as Holywood.
The biologists know that wolves are a problem. However, in todays world no solution can take place that will harm the wolves, so some really idiotic proposals has come forth. One idea was to incrase the moose population, so the wolves would eat moose, then leave the caribou alone! Another idea was the opposite; cut down the moose population, so the wolves wouldn't have as much food, then they would leave the area. They are actually live trapping wolves, then either neutering the males, or tying the tubes so they can't reproduce!! (I am not making this up)
However, I think the proof is very plain that none of the ideas the environmentalists have for preserving the areas in question, will increase, or even preserve, the caribou. And that proof is the parks in the area. Some sixty miles east of Quesnel is Bowron Lakes Park. This is joined on the south east by the Cariboo Mountain Park, which is joined on its south by the Wells Gray Park. In all, a stretch of solid park, proclaimed about sixty years ago, running north to south, southeast, for about 240 kilometres (150 miles). In width it varies from about 30 to 60 kilometres. In this entire area there are but maybe 25 miles of tourist oriented road, in the very southerly part. The entire area is virgin bush and mountains, closed (for the most part) to hunting and absolutely no travel by snowmobile, ATVs, or any othe means of motorized travel. Of course, there is no logging, or tree cutting of any sort.
This huge area was once well populated with caribou. So, if what the environmentalists are saying, that preserving old growth timber and leaving the caribou undisturbed, is what they need for recovery, why isn't this entire park area overflowing with caribou? From what I can gather there are no more caribou in the parks than there are in the areas where they are trying to protect them. Wolves, of course, no nothing about park boundrys.
In my opinion, caribou are the least understood animals of any of the large species, in BC, at least. They appear to be very cyclic in nature, with highs and lows in their population densities just like rabbits, only in much longer cycles.
Here is an example. In the 1930s caribou were very numerous near Summit Lake, just thirty miles north of Prince George. By the way, I didn't just read this in a book, but rather I received that information directly from people who had lived in the area in the 1930s. In the late 1940s I walked through the pine ridges about six miles north, and a bit east, of Summit Lake and discovered it had fairly recently been a good wintering ground for caribou. The remains of shed antlers were everywhere. To you people living in the area, how many caribou have you seen near Summit Lake?
There was virtually no logging in the entire country at that time, no snowmobiles, no ATVs, so what happened to the caribou? There was a very large population of wolves in the country, until the mid 1950s. Was it just wolves, or were the caribou on a die off in their population cycle?
