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Wanted: researchers willing to save B.C.’s caribou

The Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations has
posted two invitations to quote, with a request for a team to pilot a
helicopter into the frigid northeast of B.C. to capture and radio-collar
60 female moose, and a team to conduct a followup investigation into
moose mortality.

Both projects run Jan. 1 to Mar. 31 next year, subject to funding.

The
ministry hopes to find out how a dwindling caribou population in the
area might be related to a rise in its wolf population by looking at the
abundance and distibution of moose, a species similar to caribou which
is the primary food for wolves.

Boreal caribou are threatened
under the federal Species At Risk Act and are priority-one red-listed
provincially, meaning they are considered threatened to endangered.

“At
its root, caribou are dying because of predation,” said Chris Ritchie,
the ministry’s manager of fish and wildlife recovery implementation.

“We
think that most of that predation is because of wolves. We want to
manage the habitat and manage the caribou and manage the other wildlife
that’s influencing the caribou.”

A document for the moose collar
deployment says the ministry requires the team to provide a helicopter, a
net gun and a radio-telemetry receiver, while the ministry provides GPS
radio-collars and ear tags.

A document for the moose mortality
investigation says the investigation team will look into the deaths of
radio-collared moose and retrieve the radio-collars, which will be
monitored by a third party that notifies the ministry about any signs of
death.

The research team must obtain blood, hair and fecal matter
from each moose, inject an anti-inflammatory drug into the animals and
complete a “moose capture form.”

Data from the research will help
the ministry determine how to manage caribou survival as part of its
Boreal Caribou Implementation Plan.

Ritchie said that the project will be challenging because it is highly technical and involves many safety considerations.

“You
need to consider that there’s a person strapped into a helicopter,
hanging out of the helicopter by a tether and shooting a net over a
moose,” Ritchie said.

“And that might not even be the most dangerous part because then you have a moose with a net on it that probably is not happy.”

Ritchie
said the ministry’s wildlife veterinarian is providing animal handling
protocols, but the ideal team should have enough experience with animal
capturing and tagging that safety considerations will come naturally.

“There’s
a worker safety issue there but we also want to make sure that the
animals are treated safely. The worst thing we want to do is to damage
an animal while we’re trying to learn from that animal.”

The
ministry is heavily encouraging First Nations participation and
consultation, which Ritchies said brings “different knowledge” to the
project.

The research project is a collaboration between the
University of Northern B.C. and a Research and Effectiveness Monitoring
Board established by the provincial government,

UNBC will analyze
the data to explore how moose distribution and abundance is related to
human-caused habitat change and wolf use of caribou habitat.

The university will also look at how predator and prey abundance and behaviour might interact to put caribou at risk.

Ritchie
said death from hunting is not considered a factor because there is no
season on caribou in B.C. and vehicle collision mortality was likely a
pretty low influence.