Across North America, woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) are threatened by habitat disturbance from extractive industries, as well as increased predation rates from wolves, bears and other predators. However, to many Indigenous peoples across what is now known as Canada, caribou are a culturally important species, and such population declines represent a violation of treaty rights to a subsistence livelihood. In March 2022, two papers published in Ecological Applications outline an Indigenous-led conservation recovery programme for endangered subpopulations of caribou in British Colombia, Canada. In the first paper by Lamb et al., six members of West Moberly First Nations and Saulteau First Nations join with seven applied ecologists to outline a conservation management strategy for caribou, informed by shared Indigenous knowledge. Since 2013, this has involved three main Indigenous-led actions: (1) maternal penning and feeding, in which adult female caribou are moved to safe enclosures to give birth to calves; (2) reduction of local wolf populations by a combination of Indigenous-led trapping and provincial government-contracted culls; and (3) a multilateral partnership agreement between the Governments of the Nations, British Columbia and Canada to formally protect more than 7,900 km2 of caribou habitat. In a second paper, McNay et al. take a Western-science approach and measure the demographic effect of these actions on caribou recovery using an integrated population model. Although involved in the work, members of the West Moberly First Nations and Saulteau First Nations declined formal authorship positions owing to the highly technical nature of the paper. The authors compare one endangered subpopulation (known as Klinse-Za) that underwent maternity penning and wolf reduction, with a second subpopulation (known as Quintette) in which only wolf reduction was undertaken. They show that although both subpopulations have increased under these conservation actions, and would have been functionally extirpated within 10–15 years in their absence, only the combination of both interventions enabled the Klinse-Za subpopulation to recover to a positive growth rate. The authors say this highlights the value of conservation initiatives that are led by Indigenous peoples in the recovery of biodiversity and culturally important species. These two papers are highlighted here in our Year in Review collection as an outstanding example of knowledge coproduction that braids knowledge systems for the conservation of biological and cultural diversity.
Original references: Ecol. Appl. 32, e2581 (2022); Ecol. Appl. 32, e2580 (2022)
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