Caribou herds in Alberta, B.C., growing from wolf culls, cow pens: study [Video]

Fresh research suggests western Canada’s once-dwindling caribou numbers are finally growing.

But the same paper concludes the biggest reason for the rebound is the slaughter of hundreds of wolves, a policy that will likely have to go on for decades.

“If we don’t shoot wolves, given the state of the habitat that industry and government have allowed, we will lose caribou,” said Clayton Lamb, one of 34 co-authors of a newly published study in the journal Ecological Applications.

“It’s not the wolves’ fault.”

Caribou conservation is considered one of the toughest wildlife management problems on the continent.

The animals, printed on the back of the Canadian quarter since 1937, require undisturbed stretches of hard-to-reach old-growth boreal forest. Those same forests tend to be logged or drilled, creating roads and cutlines that invite in deer and moose — along with the wolves that eat anything with hooves.

Between 1991 and 2023, caribou populations dropped by half. More …