Caribou's changing status
<p>The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is reopening the comment period on woodland caribou listing in light of population decreases in Canada. (Photo courtesy CANADIAN WILDLIFE SERVICE)</p>
SANDPOINT — A change in protection status of woodland caribou in Canada is prompting the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to reopen the comment period on the proposed amended listing of caribou in the U.S.
The comment period will remain open until April 23, according to Fish & Wildlife.
Fish & Wildlife said new scientific information caused the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada to change its status from threatened to endangered under that country’s Species At Risk Act.
A COSEWIC assessment and status report for the caribou population which straddles the international border indicates that two subpopulations have been extirpated since 2002 and estimates an overall population of 1,356 mature individual caribou. That represents a 45-percent decline over the last three generations of caribou and a 27-percent decline since a 2002 assessment.
“Surveys have shown consistently high adult mortality and low calf recruitment, accelerating decline rates. Threats are continuing and escalating,” COSEWIC said in its most recent assessment.
Those threats include altered predator/prey dynamics due to habitat change resulting from forest harvesting in valley bottoms, increased efficiency of predators due to snowmobiling and heli-skiing.
“Infectious diseases are likely to cause increasing negative impacts, particularly in a changing climate,” the COSEWIC assessment said.
Fish & Wildlife down-listed caribou from endangered to threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act in response to a petition to remove caribou from the list of endangered species. The agency also broadened that population segment of caribou to include populations deep into British Columbia.
Eighteen caribou from the trans-boundary herd were counted in Idaho in 2014, but a survey conducted this year counted only 14, according to Wayne Wakkinen, a regional wildlife manager for the Idaho Department of Fish & Game in Coeur d’Alene.
Fish & Wildlife said previously submitted comments on the proposed amended listing do not need to be resubmitted.