Climate change may be largest threat to caribou herds, study says

Efforts to keep the species on the landscape focus on remediating disturbed habitat. If the new study's hypothesis is correct, no amount of tree-planting and cutline remediation will be enough. Climate change, not habitat loss, may be the biggest threat to the survival of threatened caribou herds, new research suggests.

Many argue that the cutlines and clearcuts left behind are pathways for deer, which lure packs of wolves that end up preying on caribou as well. In order to establish whether that envelope was spread by climate or by habitat, the authors looked to a region of northeastern Alberta and northwestern Saskatchewan.

"We found far fewer deer in places where the climate was snowier and colder," Dickie said. "We did not find an effect habitat alteration — it was half the magnitude of the climate impact.Although human impacts on caribou range are much heavier in western Alberta — some ranges are more than 90 per cent disturbed — Dickie said she would expect similar results for that region as her paper found in the east.

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