If We Really Want to Save Caribou, We'd Stop Fracking, Not Kill Wolves

​An area of western Canada is losing one of its national symbols, the caribou, due to habitat destruction from decades of forestry and oil development. But so far, Alberta—where regional populations of woodland caribou are threatened in some areas and endangered in others—has only done one thing to curb the dwindling numbers: kill the wolves that kill the caribou.

See, roads and industrial development built to take advantage of Alberta's rich natural resources has impacted the woodland habitat, in part allowing wolves to more easily gain access to the caribou herds. While the wolves aren't to blame, they have been contributing to the diminishing caribou population and nearly wiped them out in some areas, so the government decided to introduce a systematic wolf cull to address the immediate problem.

They've been killing wolves for a deca​de (nearly 1,000 i​n total since 2005) and it's actually working pretty w​ell, and doesn't seem to be affecting the robust wolf population in the province. But even the government ecologists who run the program say it's only a Band-Aid solution and real change is needed to preserve the caribou herds.

The whole process has stirred a lot of debate over whether it's ethical to ​kill one animal to save another when it was human folly that put them at risk in the first place. Government biologists and university researchers co-auth​ored a paper published in the Canadian Journal of Zoology last fall that studied the effectiveness of the program. They found that without the wolf cull, at least one of the caribou groups would likely have been wiped out by now.

They compared the caribou herd where the wolf cull was taking place to a herd elsewhere in the province and found the former group saw a 4.6 percent increase in average population growth while the latter group saw a 4.7 percent decline. But they also found the population was just staying steady, not bouncing back from its endangered status. The researchers said the program was essentially just "buying time" and that "habitat management actions will be needed to restore predator–prey communities to their long-term range of variation within which caribou might be able to persist."

Still, the research cause​d a stir, and many questioned why the province hasn't done anything other than shoot and poison wolves for the past 10 years in an effort to restore the caribou populations. The researchers have penned a second discussion paper to be published in the upcoming issue of the Journal to address the concerns and remind critics that they too think more has to be done.

Dave Hervieux, a provincial biologist who manages the wolf cull and co-authored the study, said the province could continue killing wolves for years to come and be able to maintain the number of caribou they have, but it's obviously not the ideal solution.

"The wolves are just doing what the wolves do. Ultimately, we are the cause of this because we have changed the habitat, altered the food web and the ecological dynamics of the situation, and predisposed it to be not so good for caribou anymore," he told me. "It's of our doing, so are we going to make it right?"

The problem is the government doesn't only care about caribou. A ​huge portion of the province's economy depends on natural resource development, so as the ministry prepares official plans to be published this spring for how to restore the caribou to a healthy population, it also has to balance the economical considerations of disrupting forestry and oil operations.

"None of this is easy," Hervieux said, telling me it's the most difficult problem he's faced in 31 years of government wildlife management.

"Alberta as a province, as a society, we derive a lot of our economy from natural resources. If we're going to achieve our goal of not letting these populations go extinct then there's sort of a bottom line to what the plan has to be and it might not be optimal economically."

Even if the ministry creates a plan that prioritizing preserving the caribou, it will take some time before the environment is restored enough to affect the population, which means the wolf cull will likely have to continue in order to bridge the gap.

Reluctantly, even the animal conservationists in the province are willing to accept that reality.

"We hate that. Nobody wants that. But we're looking at the lesser of the evils to keep caribou on the landscape in good habitat," Carolyn Campbell of the Alberta Wilderness Association told me. But she said "indulging in a war on wolves" without actual action to restore the habitat is "unethical" and won't solve the problem.

Campbell said there are viable solutions, like using long-distance, underground directional drilling for oil, to reduce the footprint of the industry. But given the government's track record, she and other environmental groups are cautious in their optimism that the ministry's plans will provide real protection.

"It's tragic because there were still a lot of options back in the 1980s and 90s and even just before the big fracking boom. There were more options than there are now."