By Jessianne Castle ENVIRONMENTAL AND OUTDOORS EDITOR
BOZEMAN – For husband and wife John
Lind and Cheryl Conibear Lind of Bozeman, the silver-maned mountain deer—the
caribou—has helped them to heal. In return, they hope to help restore the species,
which has been extirpated from the Lower 48 and remains vulnerable in its more
northern homelands.
During the 2019 Backcountry Hunters
and Anglers Rendezvous in Boise, Idaho, from May 1-4, the couple and a cohort
of fellow conservationists launched the Bozeman-based International Caribou
Foundation, an organization seeking to raise awareness and provide
on-the-ground measures to enhance caribou populations and protect habitat.
For the Linds, these efforts are
personal.
It was on a trip to Alaska in 2016
while living in Hawaii when John and Cheryl became enamored with the gray ghost
of the mountains. They visited a wildlife sanctuary in Fairbanks that’s home to
a group of caribou, at a critical juncture in their own lives: they were
searching for healing after watching their premature son pass away following 36
hours in the newborn intensive care unit.
Cheryl’s uterus had ruptured—a
serious medical emergency for both mother and child. “Alex just lost too much
blood, ” she said. “I was very, very lucky and very blessed to survive. It just
opens your eyes to the fact that life is short.
“In that sense, [the foundation]
has been very healing because we’re working on something that has a purpose and
has given us a purpose,” she added.
Spurred by John’s personal desire
to aid in positive change after serving five years in active duty with the
Navy, the couple moved to Bozeman shortly after and he began volunteering with
conservation organizations like the Rocky Mountain Goat Alliance and the Wild
Sheep Foundation. When they realized there wasn’t an organization solely dedicated
to caribou, the Linds recognized their calling.
“I want to make the world a better
place for future generations,” John said, adding that he believes experiences
with wild animals are an integral part of human happiness.
Caribou—or reindeer when referring
to their European counterparts—are a high-elevation member of the deer species
and are found in North America, Greenland, Russia and Scandinavia. Of 15
recognized caribou subspecies, the woodland caribou that once made its way into
the northern forests around the Great Lakes and 49th Parallel in
Washington, Idaho and Montana is particularly vulnerable as climate change and
human development threaten their survival.
According to a 2018 report by the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, caribou populations have
declined by 56 percent worldwide in the past two decades, dropping from an
estimated 4.7 million individuals to approximately 2.1 million.
In January of this year, the last
caribou in the Lower 48, and the last surviving member of the woodland herd
known as the South Selkirk, was captured in Idaho and moved to a maternal pen
in Canada to be introduced into the Columbia North caribou herd.
The exact reason for the decline?
The answer is proving complex.
“Caribou require big habitat. We
haven’t offered them that in probably 80 years,” said biologist Bart George,
who has worked for the Kalispel Tribe of Indians in Washington for eight years
and is volunteering as the International Caribou Foundation conservation
director.
George says that particular human
development, including powerlines, highways and logging, as well as overall
construction in the valleys, interrupts migration corridors and destroys the
old-growth forests the gray ghosts need to survive. During the cold winter
months, when other mammals drop down into lower elevation valleys and hills,
caribou trek upward on mountains to avoid predators and search for arboreal
lichen that grows in century-old forests.
Logging and other development
transforms old forests into areas full of young growth—places George says elk
and moose thrive for the abundance of browse. Large populations of elk and
moose draw predators like wolves and mountain lions, bringing them into closer
contact with caribou.
“Caribou have evolved with
predators for 70,000 years. They have been around predators but aren’t
predator-savvy like elk or deer,” George said. A caribou’s main line of defense,
he added, is literal avoidance—using a landscape where almost nothing else can
survive.
But with an increase of predators
in historically old-growth forests alongside further development pressures, George
says travel corridors are essential. “We can’t expect them to learn [new]
predator avoidance over a couple generations.”
David Abate, the foundation’s
marketing director, said climate change is also a threat. Warming temperatures
create more rain-on-snow events, which forms a crust over the snow and makes it
more difficult for ungulates to forage for food.
He added that the seasons are
changing and have become out of sync with the caribou’s natural clock and
migration patterns. Furthermore, sea ice is melting and cutting off access to
migration corridors, he says, which limits range in places where the climate is
already unforgiving.
Excited to be a part of something
bigger than themselves, Abate and the Linds said their first initiative is to
raise funds to support a captive breeding program for woodland caribou that is
currently in the planning phases in British Columbia. After successfully
rearing calves, the program would see to the reintroduction of the animals back
into the wild.
The foundation will also inventory
the different herds in North America by working with local biologists, and
identify potential threats each herd faces so as to better develop a
conservation strategy.
For now, the International Caribou
Foundation will focus on the North American caribou populations, but one day
the founders hope to be of assistance worldwide.
While the foundation supports
regulated hunting as a potential management tool, John said he favors decisions
that are in the best interest of the caribou. He added that he hopes to bridge
gaps between non-hunting and hunting communities on the basis of conserving the
species as shared common ground on which to build.
“At the end of the day, all I care
about is [whether] this species [is] going to be around going forward.”
Visit internationalcariboufoundation.org for more information.
