By Erin Tattersall

A human-wildlife conflict is simmering in the Peace River Region in northeastern British Columbia.

On March 21, the BC government released a draft Partnership Agreement for the recovery of the Central Group of southern mountain caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou). The draft outlines immediate actions to protect the six caribou herds in the Central Group. While many are celebrating the new plan as a new step on the path to caribou recovery, others are less than thrilled. The agreement’s release resulted in public outcry in local communities: criticisms of the government for closed-door decision-making, calls for continuing wolf control, and expressed fears of job loss and restricted backcountry recreation. In efforts to quell concerns and manage miscommunications, BC has extended the community consultation period until May 31.

How did we get here?

Caribou declines

Like caribou across Canada, Central Group herds have shrunk dramatically in recent years. There are now approximately 220 caribou remaining in this population, down from 800 in the early 2000s. The cause of their decline is complex, but ultimately leads back to growing resource extraction in the Peace region. Logging resets the forest to early seral vegetation (fast growing, disturbance tolerant plants), providing forage for deer and moose and thus supporting larger populations of these ungulates. Growing prey populations in turn bolster predator populations, resulting in more wolves on the landscape. This landscape has further been reshaped by seismic exploration for oil and gas, which creates linear features that act as movement corridors for predators to move into caribou habitat. Although caribou aren’t typically primary targets of predators, linear features increase the likelihood of a wolf-caribou encounter – or the likelihood of predation. Caribou historically retreat to high elevation and mature forests to escape predation, but with more predators and disappearing old forests, this avoidance tactic isn’t as effective as it once was. Thus, the cumulative effects of recent changes – forest harvest, linearization, more deer, moose and wolves – create a dangerous landscape for caribou.

Southern Mountain Caribou populations in British Columbia, from the Caribou Recovery Partnership Agreement Overview.

Caribou protection

Southern mountain caribou were listed as threatened under the Species At Risk Act (SARA) in 2003, creating a legal framework under which the Canadian government has an obligation to protect species facing declines from human activity. In May 2018, 10 herds of southern mountain caribou were found to be in ‘imminent threat’ of extinction, providing grounds for the federal government to issue an emergency order to halt all industrial development in critical caribou habitat. To avoid this outcome, which could jeopardize local economies, the province set about drafting conservation measures for southern mountain caribou: a Conservation Agreement between BC and Canada for southern mountain caribou, and the Partnership Agreement between BC, Canada, West Moberly First Nation and Saulteau First Nation. The two First Nations have been leaders in caribou conservation in the area, and both the provincial and the federal governments have responsibilities to consult First Nations on projects affecting their lands under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Partnership Agreement applies only to the six herds of the Central Group, while the Conservation Agreement applies to all herds of southern mountain caribou in British Columbia. The two agreements were released as drafts, and the province opened a community consultation period (originally scheduled for six weeks) to hear feedback from the public.

Community fears

Immediately, the province received pushback from Peace Region municipalities. The chief concern was for the impact on the economy: fears of lost forestry jobs spread like wildfire in places like Chetwynd, where forestry is one of the main employers. Another main worry included recreational restrictions, cutting off access to the awe-inspiring landscapes enjoyed by most locals. People came to the Region for the industry and stayed for the freedom of exploring the vast expanses of back country. In the eyes of locals, trading the region’s two foundational attractions for caribou protection is too high of a price to pay. In addition to these fears, many expressed frustration at the lack of communication and community involvement throughout the drafting of the agreements. At their worst, these grievances manifested as racist backlash against the two First Nations. Crucially, many of these fears and frustrations are based in misinformation as a result of cutting key community stakeholders out of the caribou conversation. As well as extending the consultation period, BC premier John Horgan acknowledged the province had neglected communications with affected communities and appointed a community liaison to oversee ongoing discussions.

A boreal woodland caribou in northeastern Alberta, where caribou populations face habitat loss and increased predation from industrial development similar to that faced by southern mountain caribou in BC.

But what’s actually in the agreements?

The current agreements are drafts to be finalized and implemented following the current consultation process. While the Conservation Agreement is stuck in planning phases and lacks actionable conservation measures, the Partnership Agreement maps out landscape protections to be implemented immediately. These protections include temporary suspension of new industrial development in some areas, complete habitat protection in others, as well as measures to decrease long-term landscape disturbance in caribou habitat. While some of these protections may result in reductions in forest harvest, the decrease would be less than 4% the total annual harvest across two timber supply areas and one tree farm license. Further, the agreement sets out an additional engagement process to discuss motor-vehicle restrictions in critical areas, but does not implement restricted backcountry access. The Partnership Agreement also outlines continued predator management and maternal penning to provide immediate relief to the dwindling herds, as well as plans for an Indigenous Guardian Program to monitor caribou according to traditional practices.

Moving forward

Like many conservation controversies, caribou in the Peace Region has been frequently framed in terms of perceived dichotomies: growing the economy vs. conserving the environment, and interests of rural populations vs. those within urban centres. However, in moving conservation efforts forward it is vital to look beyond seeming contradictions to find common ground. This process is a difficult one, requiring open-minded communication grounded in compassion and patience, but often reveals that perceived dichotomies share common roots: the desire to keep and grow relationships to place. It is these relationships that fuel both the desire to protect caribou as well as to protect industry jobs that sustain local communities. In continuing these consultations, it is crucial that this common ground is acknowledged and saved from drowning in inflammatory language, so that we may move past human-wildlife conflict to human-wildlife coexistence.

If you would like to participate in the consultation process, comment on both the Conservation Agreement and the Partnership Agreement here.

By Alexia Constantinou

1. The past six months have been an exciting roller coaster of the birth of a new wildlife research project: my master’s thesis. I began my MSc in September of 2018, as a co-supervised student between Cole Burton (Wildlife Coexistence Lab) and Suzanne Simard (Belowground Ecology Group). My work focuses on how forest harvesting methods, particularly partial harvesting treatments, affect terrestrial mammal biodiversity. Forestry is a land-based industry, and much of our province’s biodiversity and social values are intrinsically related to the health of forest ecosystems. One of the first things I learned in grad school is how much I love my project and how lucky I am to be studying wildlife ecology on our forest land base.

​

Figure 1. An assortment of the camera trap images of species from my study site in the Kootenays: from left to right and top to bottom, white-tailed deer butting heads, coyotes hunting and observing the camera, a striped skunk (who happened to slip off the log in the next image), and a male elk passing through one of the control forests.

2. Settler-Canadians research, live and work on the ancestral, traditional and unceded territories of 203 First Nations in British Columbia. I grew up in Ontario, near the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation, who are Anishinaabeg. I feel humbled and grateful to be an uninvited guest on land that has supported over 14,000 years of community and history before my time in BC. I am grateful to be learning about the Indigenous Peoples who live on the territory around me and working towards building trusting, mutually beneficial relationships.

3. I am continually learning how to work more efficiently, ask for help or guidance when I need it, and lean on wonderful lab mates and friends for exercise breaks during longs days at the computer. In FNIS 533G Indigenous Legal Traditions, we check in each week about how we are striving to live the good life, via Anishinaabe ways of knowing. I am learning and sharing lessons about balancing work and seeking the support, fulfillment and validation we all need.

4. There is a magical and soul-satisfying aspect to looking at camera trap images. For me, this is because, via the lens of the camera, I am able to see how we share the forest landscape with wildlife, if only for a brief moment. Classifying and going through camera trap images is one of the best parts of this work! I am learning to make the most of that joy.

Figure 2. Elk (Cervus canadensis) and white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) adults with juveniles. A highlight from the first spring with operational cameras at sites in the Kootenays.

Figure 3. The first bear photos on the cameras (also in the Kootenays)! On the left is a black bear cub (Ursus americanus), and on the right is an adult grizzly bear (Ursus arctos).

5. Winter field work is the best. No bugs, no heat, all blankets of beautiful snow. 10/10 recommend.

Figure 4. Enjoying winter field work with one of the dogs at Alex Fraser Research Forest (left), and taking out the first memory card in the Kootenays.

By: Taylor Justason

Figure 1. An example of a user-defined “ROI” or region of interest used in the Phenopix analysis.

With one of WildCo’s main study tools being the camera trap, readers of this blog have probably gathered that the use of remote cameras to study the natural world is rapidly increasing in popularity. Remotely-triggered cameras for detecting wildlife have been in use almost as long as the camera has been around: tripwires were paired with cameras in the 1890’s to get animals to “photograph themselves” (O’Connell et al., 2011). And though not quite as storied a practice, remote cameras have been used to capture plants and document landscape change for more than half a century (Alberton et al., 2017). Obviously, these two respective fields have evolved quite a bit since their beginnings. Yet, despite overarching similarities between these zoological and botanical methodologies, and the questions they seek to answer, the twin photographic practices have not often crossed paths.

However, the potential to harness camera trap surveys to collect information on both plant and animal communities is enormous. As the saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” and in camera trapping, a picture can contain a thousand data points. The photographic captures are a treasure trove of information–modern camera traps can record time, temperature, barometric pressure, location, and everything happening in the frame—but usually much of this information goes unused.

One of the often-overlooked tidbits of information from wildlife cameras is what the plants are doing in the background, rather than what the animals are doing in the foreground. Plants have seasonal life cycles directly linked to climate and weather, and animal life cycles are generally linked to these in turn. Many of the phenomena caused by these cycles within plants are generally quite visible, like germination, budding, flowering, and senescence. However, previously extracting this information from photos was tedious. Now, however, with new automated data extraction tools, this information is much more accessible.

Figure 2. The predicted annual phenological cycle of an example camera trap “region of interest”.

Recently in WildCo, our focus has been centred on extracting annual phenological data from images we’ve taken, using an R package called Phenopix (Filippa et al. 2017). In phenological studies with camera traps, images are taken at least once a day at the same time every day to produce daily time-lapses over time.  By then setting a ‘Region of Interest’ (ROI) for our photos within the package, we can look at the growth cycle of a specific type of vegetation, say grass, in the foreground of an image. Phenopix can then extract the colours from the ROI and give us a metric of “greenness” for each day. This can be used as a proxy for the plant’s yearly cycle, from budding through green-up to abscission (loss of leaves in the fall). The package will then fit a curve to those values, analyze it, and label those aforementioned events in the cycle, all while computing the uncertainty in the plotted curve and labeling it using built-in functions. And ‘greenness’ is not the only metric that can be produced- information on any of the primary colours can be extracted, and blue can be used as a proxy for snow cover, potentially allowing for quick extraction of snow cover data!

Understanding the annual phenology of a collection of sites can have useful implications for wildlife ecology and conservation. For long-term camera-trap studies of animals that already take daily time-lapse images, the captured images could also be providing long-term data on phenological responses to climate change. As the climate changes, timing of budding and other events in the plant life cycles may shift, and these observed shifts might act indicators of climate patterns. These phenological data can also be used as covariates in models to assess patterns and drivers of changes in animal distribution and abundance. It may be that connecting these data on plant phenology to animal detections will offer finer-scaled insights into spatiotemporal patterns of habitat selection for the species that form the backbone of our research at WildCo.

As has been discussed in previous blog posts, careful analysis of these animals’ patterns and tendencies can help inform science-based  policies to improve wildlife management. When thinking about camera trap surveys, we often think about dramatic photos of charismatic megafauna, but the environment surrounding the animal should not be ignored.

Figure 3. A boreal woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) captured on camera. Phenopix may give insights into connections between background phenology/snow cover and species detection rates.

References:

Alberton, B., Torres, R. da S., Cancian, L.F., Borges, B.D., Almeida, J., Mariano, G.C., Santos, J. dos, Morellato, L.P.C., 2017. Introducing digital cameras to monitor plant phenology in the tropics: applications for conservation. Perspect. Ecol. Conserv. 15, 82–90. doi:10.1016/j.pecon.2017.06.004

O’Connell, A.F., Nichols, J.D., Karanth, K.U. (Eds.), 2011. Camera Traps in Animal Ecology: Methods and Analyses. Springer.

Filippa, G., Cremonese, E., Migliavacca, M., Galvagno, M., Folker, M., Richardson, A.D., Tomelleri, E., 2017. phenopix: Process Digital Images of a Vegetation Cover. R package version 2.3.1. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=phenopix