Deer Family of British Columbia: WOODLAND CARIBOU

Rangifer tarandus

Here is a member of the deer family (Artiodactyla) that,  in countless, seemingly undiminishable numbers, roamed the cold regions of the entire Northern Hemisphere since the beginning of time. Well, not quite the beginning but longer than many other mammals have.


Its common name is ... what?
Is it a caribou on a 25 cent coin or is it Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer tied to the Santa's sled? 
Enough to drive an "English-as-a-second-language" person crazy.

Caribou is derived from "qualipu" - an old Mi'maq word meaning "he, who digs in the snow" or "snow shoveler". Referring to the caribou way of living - searching for lichens, of course.
Reindeer sounds more like a workhorse, why not to entangle an animal in reins and send it flying to the sky! Very European!

Things can get even messier when we attempt to classify the species. Just try.

This "snow-shoveller" has lived on Earth for more than 200 000 years, having enough stamina to outlive the much more famous creatures of the pre-ice, ice and post-ice ages. 
It also had enough time to evolve into 9 subspecies, 2 of which, along with the 20th Century, have taken their final bow and departed into oblivion.
That leaves us with 7 subspecies still roaming the North. All in all there are about 5 million caribou left worldwide.

6 of those 7 subspecies can be found in North America and for a nice VISUAL overview just have a look at a nice map. Just click.

On this excellent map we can see that in Canada, the most numerous species (close to1 million ) is Northern Woodland Caribou, Rangifer tarandus caribou 

GREAT, 

narrowed it down to one sub-species

BUT

The caribou depend mostly on terrestrial and arboreal lichens …. which means that, as the seasons change they must migrate to different places to be able to feed and survive.  

NOW

Migration on Earth can happen in two directions: 

one can change the latitude travelling from South to North and back = more like a flat, horizontal travel,

or one can change the altitude and descend to the valley bottoms where there is much less snow in the winter and return up to the mountain tops in spring and summertime = vertical travel.

SO

A very long time ago the Woodland Caribou, have figured out these migratory possibilities and evolved into 

3 different ecotypes:

the horizontal traveler of the barren tundra became northern woodland caribou

 the horizontal traveler of the northern boreal woods became boreal caribou

and the vertical travelers of the southern interior mountains became mountain woodland caribou,

They share the same genes but live in different habitats.

UMPH! LIVE & LEARN!

Check out this BC wildlife publication if you really wish to learn more.

And while there are still close to one million of the northern Caribou left in Canada (seems like many?) 

there are very few mountain woodland caribou left  living in small and scattered groups in BC and Idaho.

Maybe I am not good at searching for the numbers, but I cannot figure out how many are actually left.  

The latest number I found was 1700 but I am not sure about the year.

 http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/wld/speciesconservation/mc/index.html 

 All I know is that this group that we've met in April 2013 

is known as

The International Selkirk Population, 

and that it is extremely small, rare and vulnerable. 

West Kootenay region with its semi-wet climate supports the largest variety of tree species in British Columbia. It has been heavily logged although there are still some old growth stands left where lichens and mosses and other vegetation still thrive.

Mountain Caribou of the Selkirk group during their Spring migration. The snowpack is hard enough to support their weight and high enough to help them reach the lichens growing on the trees.

Mountain Caribou have very wide hooves - they serve as shovels for digging out mosses and other food and as snowshoes that help them to walk on the snow.  

They are also a formidable weapon helping to drive away the predators.

Their main enemies are wolves, cougars, perhaps wolverines and bears  and of course - humans.

I am not worried as much about the caribou being preyed upon by the "bad guys" such as wolves, cougars or other of their natural enemies. After all, they all tried to out-trick each other for a very long time, playing more or less a fair game.
I am much more worried about the "good guys", the smartest species on Earth invading and changing their routes and habitat. As we take our guns and machines of all sorts up to the wilderness we force all wildlife to yield - often displacing them into inferior locations thus making them weaker and more vulnerable to everything else that they must face.  
Every first-grader knows this talk these days .... yet ....

There are only 40 - if - of these caribou left in the Selkirk mountains.

Arboreal lichens make major part of Mountain Caribou diet. The are slow growing and require mature trees to dwell on.

Any time a person says “I saw a bunch of mountain caribou today” everyone jumps up.
Really? 
Where? 
How many? 

…… I am not kidding, it happens all the time.

It was our turn last April and for the first time in our lives we saw a small group of mountain caribou!!! 

Lucky us!

Really? When? 
April 23rd. The snowpack was hardening and they were on their way up the mountains.

Where? 
I am not telling – though most locals will know.

How many? 
Only a handful, less than ten.

The bulls shed their large antlers in the fall, right after the rut season that spans September - October.

They are starting to bud anew in Spring.

.

The only individuals sporting small antlers at the time were all females. 

They are the ones who keep theirs until they give birth up in the mountains in early June. 
When it comes to antlers the caribou girls do not have so much to brag about . They are just small and uneven, but they are good enough for protection against a predator or for driving away young males with strange ideas.

On the other hand – caribou females are the only  girls in the entire deer family sporting antlers at all. So there!

When they reach the safety of the high country, each pregnant females will give birth to a single calf . The young are born in the first part of June.

Found a lichen! Yum!

Crossing the road.
Salt on the roads is irresistible to all ungulates- there is too little of it in their winter diet. Licking the highway salt put the animals in great danger from traffic.We have seen and heard the heavy commercial trucks gearing down and doing their best to avoid collision on the steep downhill of this high mountain pass.

I don't know how valid this is but somewhere I read  the following:
Reaching the high alpine meadows used to mean safety and food. With the warming trends though, the caribou are getting out of sync when it comes from reaching their summer grounds. Warmer climate means that the vegetation starts to grow earlier than it used to and by the time the caribou arrive most plants are past their prime. 
Yet another challenge for a creature that survived the ice ages and climate disasters of all previous sorts?

http://www.conservationnw.org/what-we-do/british-columbia/mountain-caribou