Efforts to restore a dwindling caribou herd in the Northeast have begun to pay off for the Saulteau and West Moberly First Nations.
Indigenous guardians from the two nations have been working for years to restore the once numerous Klinse-Za caribou herd.
Elders from the Nations say that the herd was once so abundant that they dotted the landscape of the area like bugs.
But, as of 2013, officially counts had the herd’s population down to just 36, down from an estimated high of over 200.
Those numbers are now back up to 132, thanks to the guardian’s efforts to rehabilitate local habitats and control predator populations.
But its their maternity pen, located on Mount Bickford, west of Chetwynd, that has made the biggest impact.
There, caribou cows are brought and enclosed in a protected fence, where guardians are sure to keep their distance while feeding them.
Once they give birth and their youngest calf hits seven weeks old, the caribou are fitted with GPS collars and released back into the wild.
That work is conducted by two, two-man teams, on a rotational basis, consisting of Starr Gauthier and Draydon Field from the Saulteau, and Corbin Brown and Kendall Davis from West Moberly.
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