In the oil vs. wildlife fight, Sarah Palin says caribou should "take one for the team"
Canada is killing wolves to save endangered caribou. The real problem? Tar sands development.
BY JASON BITTEL | @BITTELMETHIS
Is it ever OK to kill native animals in the name of conservation? What if controlling one wildlife population could mean saving another? And what if the animals that die are wolves—one of the most fiercely debated species in North America?
These are some of the difficult questions swirling around Alberta, Canada, right now.
Woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou), which are in crisis across their Canadian range, were declared endangered in the province in 2010. In recent decades, tar sands development, timber companies, and fracking have been fragmenting the species’ habitat across northern Alberta, making the boreal forest there more appealing to moose, deer, and elk. As more of those tasty hooved species have moved into these woods, more gray wolves, their primary predator, have followed.
Even though wolves don’t eat much caribou—they make up just around 4.7 percent of the carnivore’s diet—death-by-wolf has still become the leading cause of caribou mortality in western Alberta.
“The food webs have changed,” says Dave Hervieux, regional resource manager for Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development. “The number of wolves there now might be an order of magnitude or two greater than what is natural for the area.”
...
... populations in the Little Smoky range study area were “among the higher reported wolf density estimates in North America.”
Woodland caribou populations, on the other hand, are in free fall. ...
... difficult for them to bounce back from a sudden population decline.
Killing the caribou’s predators, however, hasn’t quite had the effect the Albertan government had hoped. The original thought was that limiting the wolves would bump up caribou numbers. But after 12 years, Hervieux found that even when they killed 40 percent to 50 percent of the wolves in the Little Smoky range each year, the woodland caribou population merely stabilized.
But here’s the thing: If Canada really wants to save its woodland caribou, it needs to address the underlying problem of the tar sands, fracking and timber operations that are ripping up the land.
Every new well brings more roads, well pads, and seismic lines, leading to more open space and fragmented forests. This transforms boreal forests into a new kind of habitat—one that allows wolves to travel faster, hunt more efficiently, and expand their territories deeper into the woods.
...
UPDATE: Sarah Palin told a group of oil and gas executives yesterday that she already has this problem figured out. When it comes to energy development hurting wildlife, she said the caribou just need to “take one for the team.” http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/sarah-palin-dying-caribou-have-to-take-one-for-the-team-so-we-can-expand-oil-pipelines
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http://www.onearth.org/earthwire/tar-sands-caribou-habitat
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