Collaring program provides data to monitor the population

Roxanna Thompson
Northern News Services
Published Thursday, February 27, 2014

DEH CHO
Twelve female caribou are wearing technology around their necks that will help monitor the population of their species in the Deh Cho.

A collaring program by the Deh Cho and South Slave regions of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (ENR) has wrapped up for this year. The deployment of GPS collars took place in the Deh Cho and South Slave between Feb. 6 and 10.

The collars are only placed on female boreal woodland caribou because they drive the population, said Nic Larter, the manager of wildlife research and monitoring in the Deh Cho for the department. Data from the collars allows ENR to look at the survival rate of females as well as the success rate of calving and rearing.

The collars provide the location of the caribou three times a day. From the ENR office in Fort Simpson, Larter can tell what day and where any of the collared caribou calve because their daily movements change distinctly after a birth.

Paired with the collaring program, the department does a classification survey every March, which the Deh Cho and South Slave are also sharing, to locate each of the collared caribou and see if they have a calf with them. The calves will have survived almost a full year at that point because they are born in May or June, said Larter. From the survey, the department can estimate if the population of boreal woodland caribou is increasing or decreasing.

The two regions are sharing their budget for the collaring and survey because it is cost efficient, he said. The budget for this year's collaring is approximately $30,000 to $35,000 and between $40,000 to $45,000 for the survey.

In the Deh Cho, the collaring is part of an ongoing program that started in March 2004.

It began because of concerns about the possible effects the proposed Mackenzie Valley Pipeline would have on caribou, said Larter. Data needs to be gathered before, during and after a development to see what the impact is and whether mitigation measures were successful.

The Dehcho Boreal Caribou Working Group, which was designed to gather research and information about boreal caribou and share it with communities in the region, reviews the collaring plans each year. The collaring program is also reviewed at regional wildlife workshops.

"They realize some of the questions can only be answered with the use of information from GPS collars," he said.

First Nations request collars be deployed in certain areas and not in others. This year Jean Marie River First Nation and Pehdzeh Ki First Nation asked that caribou be collared in areas beside the large forest fires that burned this past summer, to see what effect they have had, said Larter.

This year the department wanted to put six of the collars on caribou south of the Mackenzie River before Camsell Bend and the other six north of the river. Ten collars are being deployed in the South Slave.

In the Deh Cho the goal is to have at least 30 active GPS collars, including ones from previous years, on females before the calving season. The collars were put on by a professional capture crew from northern B.C.

"We had a more difficult time collaring this winter," Larter said.

It wasn't easy to find caribou in areas the First Nations requested, because the animals were moving more than usual and are in small groups, he said.