Bulkley Valley Research Centre - Science in the Public Interest

COSEWIC Status Report on Caribou

Wednesday April 1, 2015  12:00pm-1:00pm

Northwest Community College - Smithers

In 2000, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) assessed caribou within the Southern Mountain National Ecological Area in the southern portion of BC and in southwestern Alberta as Threatened, and caribou within the Northern Mountain National Ecological Area in northern BC, Yukon and southwestern NWT as Special Concern. That status was reaffirmed in 2002 and caribou in the Southern Mountain National Ecological Area were listed as Threatened and caribou in the Northern Mountain National Ecological Area were listed as Special Concern in Schedule 1 of the newly created federal Species at Risk Act.  Since then, COSEWIC refined its definition of Designatable Units, which are discreet and evolutionarily significant units within a species, and new Designatable Units were recommended for caribou in Canada in 2011.  The Northern Mountain and Southern Mountain National Ecological Areas were reorganized into 3 Designatable Units: Northern Mountain, Southern Mountain and Central Mountain.  In 2014, COSEWIC assessed the status of caribou in those 3 Designatable Units.  This presentation will summarize the findings of the 2014 COSEWIC status assessment report with a focus on BC populations, and will clarify the relationships between different categorizations used for caribou in BC.