Their name remains. Caribou, Caribou Barren, Caribou Harbour, Caribou Island, Caribou Lake. In Nova Scotia alone, there are 42 caribou placenames in all. New Brunswick has 10 caribou names. Alas, caribou no longer exist in the Maritime provinces. In Newfoundland and Labrador they persist, but with populations declining.
Back in the day
New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island caribou (Rangifer tarandus) were the woodland type, adapted to Acadian forests, a lush, transitional, hardwood and softwood forest situated between the hardwoods of New England to the south and the boreal forests of the north. They also inhabit an area in southeastern Quebec. These caribou sport smaller antlers and undertook short migrations from summer highlands to winter lowlands, compared to the longer treks of their cousins farther north. They are well suited for cold climates.
Extirpated from P.E.I. sometime after 1765, caribou had vanished from mainland Nova Scotia by 1905 and from Cape Breton around 1912. Only occasional sightings occurred after those times. They had disappeared in New Brunswick by 1927. A few living examples of this variety still cling to existence in a small portion of Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula in the Chic-Choc Mountains.
In Northern Europe, the same species is called reindeer, with both wild and domesticated populations. Attempts to introduce domesticated reindeer from Europe into Canada have resulted in some success, particularly with the herd near the Mackenzie Delta, in the Northwest Territories.
Small herds of woodland caribou historically inhabited mature spruce forests and other associated mature boreal forest types across Canada. These animals have a unique ability to survive in harsh northern winters by sniffing out lichens under snow cover and pawing the white stuff away to eat them. Their excellent senses of smell and hearing help them, but relatively poor eyesight and curiosity tends to render them an easy shot.
Over the last three centuries, woodland caribou populations lost their traditional grounds to the clear cutting of boreal and Acadian forests, mining exploration and sites, sprawling fossil fuel extraction and pipelines. Other challenges include global warming, hunting, forest fires, influxes of deer, and parasites.
Mature forest demise
The relentless, recurring harvests of most forests drastically reduced the lichens caribou found in mature Acadian forests. Their food supply disappeared. Forested lands in Nova Scotia that were accessible by horse and more recently, heavy machinery, have been harvested five times over the past three centuries. Mature, lichen-adorned spruce forests needed by caribou became prime targets of the forest industry.
Large animals like caribou and moose require equally large, healthy forest territories. Their habitat needs collide head-on with single-minded economic forestry interests. Humans could be logging and preserving the integrity of forest ecosystems at the same time. Instead, we are diminishing forest wildlife.
Global warming
Climate change is taking a toll on caribou, plus myriad other wildlife species, throughout their native environments. In northern Canada, including the Torngat Mountains of Labrador, glaciers that used to offer cool caribou refuges from summer flies are melting away quickly, while rivers downstream dry out. Summers are hotter than they used to be, with occasional “heat domes” seriously challenging these northern-adapted mammals. Many less obvious factors, from insect pests and parasites to a lack of shady forests where caribou could retreat, are also climate-change linked.
Predation and hunting changes
Wolves are the natural top predator in the north. They have a culling influence on caribou herds, focussing on the infirm, injured, weak, and young prey. Many biologists agree that this relationship has benefited populations of both species for thousands of years. If caribou were still in the Maritimes, coyotes would be taking the same role that wolves once occupied.
In pre-contact times, caribou hunting by Indigenous people in Eastern Canada was in tune with caribou population numbers. When Europeans arrived, rifles made it possible to kill large numbers in a short time. Populations plummeted.
My only caribou hunt took place in the Yukon about 30 years ago. Two friends and I were dropped off by float plane to a lake with no name, for eight days. Early one morning, armed, we began climbing the steep mountain above the tents and the lake. Six hours later, after passing fresh grizzly bear excavations of ground squirrel winter stockpiles, we neared the top. I was gasping in the thin air, while my Yukon friend was hardly winded at all. Moving to the Maritimes as an adult, it turned out, had turned me into a “flatlander.”
On the mountaintop, we spotted three grazing caribou. A light breeze kept some flies away as we considered next steps. The prospect of carrying a caribou carcass back down the mountain caused us to pause and ponder. We fired no shots that day.
Fires destroyed habitats
In the 18th and 19th centuries, fires associated with land clearing for farming often jumped into forests, burning out of control for weeks or months, stopping only when they reached the sea or a large river. This evidence is still found in the charcoal that remains in many upper forest soils. Today in the Maritimes, many forest fires are still caused by humans, due to carelessness and recreation.
Deer and a parasite
By the 20th century, white-tailed deer were being introduced to Nova Scotia. At the same time, they began moving in from Maine to New Brunswick, and then Nova Scotia. The deer brought a brainworm parasite, Parelaphostrongylus tenuis. Although the white-tail’s bodies had adjusted to having the parasite, whenever moose and caribou accidentally ingested the parasite while feeding, it killed them.
The roads associated with logging, plus the habitat and soil degradation following repeated forest harvests, depleted habitats. The changes favoured deer and coyotes.
Reintroduction attempts
Officials released eight caribou in Nova Scotia’s Liscomb Game Sanctuary in 1939. That failed. Fifty-nine caribou from Quebec were released in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, Nova Scotia, in 1968 and 1969. They had disappeared by 1972. Illegal hunting, the brainworm parasite, and climate change likely killed them.
Looking ahead
Human overpopulation increases extraction pressures on the planet’s so-called natural resources. In our personal lives, behaviour, and choices, we could collectively reduce our impacts, in part by lowering consumption levels. Wants, reduced to needs, can still harbour happiness.
Forest cutting should be curtailed and done more prudently, with native wildlife a prime consideration. I’ve witnessed this in northern Wisconsin in the Menominee Forest, which Menominee Tribal Enterprises manages. Using a 150-year planning horizon, they’ve removed more than 2.5 billion board feet of timber in 140 years. Yet the volume of standing timber is greater now than in 1854, when the Wolf River Treaty created the reservation. They’ve done this while maintaining almost 30 tree species, 12 habitat types, and an abundance and diversity of wildlife and plants.
Atlantic Canadians need to be balancing the conservation of our natural world with prudent resource use. Instead, our provincial and federal governments prioritize “resource extraction” over everything else. My friend Jamie Simpson, a Nova Scotian lawyer, writer, and forester, calls this “shooting ourselves in the foot.”
Advice we hear about reducing climate impacts by lowering fossil fuel use and eating and shopping locally, would also benefit wildlife, including the caribou.
Nature needs our collective help, now more than ever.