The provincial government and Ducks Unlimited Canada have entered into a three-year agreement that will help better define the habitat of woodland caribou.
The agreement, at a cost of $262,000, will enable the Ministry of Environment to purchase wetland classification data for about 200,000 square kilometres of Saskatchewan's northern forest. Ducks Unlimited has already mapped nearly half of the boreal forest zone in northern Saskatchewan. The data will help determine areas of critical habitat for caribou under the federal recovery strategy that was announced last year.
The Ducks Unlimited data is especially important because it breaks down wetland habitat into 19 different sub-categories. Currently the federal inventory only lists five classes of wetlands.
"It's an important distinction to make," said Mark Doyle, an inventory specialist with the Ministry of Environment. "Woodland caribou prefer a tree bog environment as opposed to tree fen, for example."
A bog is fed by rain while a fen is fed by rain and overland flow of water. The difference may be technical but it's critical in identifying what area is prime caribou habitat.
The woodland caribou is the largest caribou subspecies in Canada and lives primarily in the boreal forest from the Northwest Territories to Quebec, with an isolated population in Newfoundland. Unlike the Arctic-dwelling Peary or barren-ground caribou, woodland caribou live in forests year-round and do not migrate. They also tend to live in smaller groups or even sometimes alone. The majority of their diet consists of lichens and they thrive in large areas of old-growth forests, making them extremely vulnerable to habitat loss.
Woodland caribou are listed under Canada's Species at Risk Act (SARA). Caribou in Saskatchewan are part of the Boreal population, which is listed as threatened, though estimates of how many are living in the province are hard to come by.
"There was a status report done in 2000 that reported an estimate of 5,000 caribou, but the reliability of that is questionable," said Gigi Pittoello, a habitat ecologist with the ministry.
A number of studies have been launched in the last year to study the caribou, including one that will radio collar caribou this fall and winter to get a sense of their movements and lifestyle. The government is partnering with industry, academics and First Nations to try and better understand these elusive animals. With many other large mammals the default method is to survey from the air, but caribou make that option difficult.
"They are notoriously difficult to survey from the air," said Pittoello. "We often survey moose and deer from the air but caribou like to hide on us so it's tough to know how many are out there."
Coupled with the remoteness of their habitat (the southernmost point of their range is north of Prince Albert), it's impossible to know how healthy Saskatchewan's caribou population is.
"We're not convinced on what their status is because they have so little human contact," Pittoello said.
Under the terms of the federal recovery strategy the province must deliver data to the federal government by 2016, though Pittoello said many of the studies will run until 2018.
"One or two years does not produce enough data to understand these animals," she said. "We also need to develop range plans, which will indicate how to maintain or improve habitat for caribou."
Pittoello has been studying the caribou's genetic makeup by collecting the easiest form of genetic marker to find - droppings. The results from this important but unglamorous work will tell us more about how caribou interact with each other and how different populations are linked.
Over the next five years the curtain will be pulled back on one of Saskatchewan's most iconic and mysterious animals.
