Defenders' Experts
Woodland Caribou: Background and Recovery
For centuries, thousands of woodland caribou thrived in America’s northern forests and ranged across Canada and the northern U.S. border from Maine to Washington. But this reindeer relative, renowned for its ability to survive in harsh mountain wilderness, has met its match: humans. Increasing human activity, including logging, road building, habitat fragmentation and the presence of motorized vehicles such as snowmobiles, have reduced the woodland caribou population dramatically and limited the species to isolated pockets of alpine forest in northern Idaho. Today, the woodland caribou is one of the most critically endangered mammals in the U.S.
Caribou are a member of the deer family and are adapted to cope with harsh winter conditions. They have low reproductive rates, and subsist on seasonal plants and high altitude forest lichen. Historically they inhabited the forests of the Northern United States from Maine to Washington State, but have been reduced to one small herd in the United States, in the Selkirk Mountains of northern Idaho, eastern Washington and southern British Columbia. This last herd is reduced to approximately 35 members that tend to stay mostly in the Canadian part of its range.
The U.S. government, aware of the growing threat to caribou survival, listed the woodland caribou as an endangered species in the United States in 1984. Despite this protection, woodland caribou numbers in the U.S. have declined even further and habitat range has been reduced to less than half. In 1994, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a recovery plan for the Selkirk woodland caribou, outlining actions required to protect and recover the species, actions that were ignored for over a decade. A successful lawsuit by Defenders of Wildlife and local partners requires the Forest Service to develop a long-term winter recreation strategy addressing snowmobile impacts on woodland caribou and protecting critical caribou habitats and corridors in the meantime.
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