What about Caribou????

[doug77]

One more thing we hunted Central Barren Ground caribou.

doug77

[jonsimoneau]

Dang...after hearing about current hunt prices...and the fact that caribou numbers are apparently way down...I'm sure glad I did it when I did.  I could not afford it at the time, but it would be even tougher now.  Do it when you can guys.  You only get one chance!

[Daz]

Caribou of all species are sensitive to human encroachment and habitat disruption. Our BC Southern Interior Mt. caribou are threatened because of logging, while northern Mt. and Barren Ground herds are pushed by mineral exploration and extraction.

The Eastern Barren Ground herds are the victims of mineral exploration and hydro-electric developments.

The problem? The problem is us. We refuse to acknowledge that we cannot displace large tracts of untouched wilderness without consequences.  The Eastern U.S. is a huge consumer of hydroelectric power from Eastern Canada.

Alaska? How much development is it seeing? The oil and gas expo is immense.

Ask yourself where your amenities REALLY come from, and then think about caribou...

[Orion]

Good info Steve H.  Thanks.  I was thinking about a caribou hunt a few years ago, but sort of let it slide.  Started to get the bug again recently.  Had no idea the herds in various parts of Alaska (and Canada) are in such bad shape.

[Steve H.]

Daz:  Caribou and our oil pipeline say that isn't really the case, the caribou don't even bat an eye.  A couple drill rigs aren't going to crash a caribou herd, not even a few square mile developed mine site like an open pit.

The take home message is that what is reality for any given caribou herd one year may be totally different a year or so later.

Also, very little caribou hunting in Alaska is "migration dependent".  Yes caribou move around from area to area BUT don't confuse these movements with some big National Geographic "migration" event.

[Daz]

Steve, so i'll give you a point for the AK argument. Want to tackle the other ones?

[Steve H.]

Daz:  I only have personally witnessed caribou interaction with our oil pipeline which is a couple thousand miles long and can make inferences with how a caribou would interact with a much smaller mineral exloration drill program from my knowledge of that industry.  Its mostly pretty small stuff compared to the oil pipeline infrastructure.  A quarter square mile for a lode mine to a couple square miles for an open pit is pretty small in terms of caribou habitat.  Logging and hydroelectric in caribou country is outside my experience so I can make guesses only.

I'm more concerned about uncontriolled predation than development in some herds but caribou can also outgrow their habitat too like what probably happened in the Mulchatna herd of AK a decade ago.

[Daz]

I appreciate the thoughtful response Steve. One of the beauties of this site is the ability to dialogue.

The resiliency of animals and ungulates in particular is amazing, but at the end of the day, disruption of traditional feeding and breeding areas is just that-disruption. One of the biggest studied non-extraction impacts on Southern Mountain Caribou is from recreational winter use from Heli and Cat ski operations, as well as snowmobile use.

Predation? I thought that AK had a fairly reasonable predator management program, and that it had been shown to work well? Was there not also concern over some form of hoof and mouth disease or some parasite as well in one of the Mulchatna sub-herds a few years back?

Thanks again for being a class act Steve.

[Steve H.]

"Predation? I thought that AK had a fairly reasonable predator management program, and that it had been shown to work well?"

It is working (bigger deal for moose than caribou) but unfortunately things were really bad by the time we got rid of the liberal weenie governor from the late 90's and started addressed the problem.


"Was there not also concern over some form of hoof and mouth disease or some parasite as well in one of the Mulchatna sub-herds a few years back?"

Yes, and I believe that happened because there were too many caribou on the range.

[Daz]

It would be interesting to map the surrounding exploration/development for the ten years previous of the Mulchatna (prior to it's increase in size) to see if the herd expansion was related to a condensing of available areas for the smaller herds, and a coalescing in the only available area where they could be...devil's advocate and all that...wink-wink/nudge-nudge...you see where i'm going with this...

[Steve H.]

Lots of drilling in localized areas AFTER but leading up to the collapse of the Mulchatna herd found us with very low metal prices so exploration efforts were low too.  Exploration drilling doesn't account for over grazing that I witnessed in 2001!

[Daz]

Thanks for humouring me Steve....my wife says that i've never really progressed past the point of "how comes" and "why nots" that normal people outgrow past age four.

[Fischman]

Had some friends go with a (very big)(very reputable outfitter)and if you didn't buy the top two "packages" you didn't get moved to where the animals were! They were very dissapointed and most were forced last day to borrow a rifle and do a longshot or go home emptyhanded with their wheelies!!! Not impressed with the stories about shutting down the season and guys getting sent home without any real hunting and tags not getting refunded.

[akdd]

The central arctic caribou herd around Prudhoe Bay where most of the oil and gas development has occurred has grown by 8.5% a year. Here is a link to an article about the herd.
 http://www.anwr.org/features/pdfs/caribou-facts.pdf