The Once & Future Hunt?
The rosy fingertips of dawn. Boots scuffing rocks. The creak of my pack as gear settles in it. The crack of my back as my pack settles on it. This morning has the hallmarks of a hunt, and an epic one at that — a rare Rocky Mountain rainforest, the chance of a grizzly, or to get lost. A hummingbird buzzes me repeatedly at the trailhead — I take it as a good sign.
Yet my hands are unencumbered, my disposition the wide-eyed wonder of a hiker, not the calculating optimism of a hunter. The object of my pursuit — woodland caribou — no longer live here. No longer live in these Selkirk Mountains of north Idaho and Washington. Or next door in the Purcell Mountains of Montana. Not further south in the Clearwater drainage, or in the boreal forests of the Great Lakes, or the northeastern forests they used to roam south to New York. As of January 14, 2019, there are no known caribou left in the continental US. The last one, a female, was captured and relocated to a herd in British Columbia, where the rest of the world’s mountain caribou — a type of woodland caribou that prefers mountains to lowland forests — are declining too, down about a third in the past decade. One small herd spends part of their time in Alaska.
Noumenon no more
I’m not quite sure why I’m here, but I was compelled to return to these mountains after the last caribou left, I guess to see if they felt any different. Any different without one of their noumenon — a native species essential to the landscape, according to Aldo Leopold, a founding father of wildlife conservation. He considered noumenon an imponderable essence, and the loss of one from its native landscape an “ecological death,” the significance of which is essentially inexpressible.
On previous visits I could look up and envision caribou crossing a clearing, or look around and anticipate one through the trees. Was that glimpse of grey up ahead the hump of one? Or a rock. Are those antlers rising out of the ferns? Or a branch. Even when the herd was healthier, I knew the chance of seeing a “grey ghost”, as they are known for their ability to fade out of sight, was next to nil. But it was not nil, and that meant something, a lot actually. And made long hikes more interesting. Even on this trip, part of me probably hoped to find a few myself, lingering on, undetected by the biologists that survey these mountains, or the Tribes that live nearby, or the people that recreate here regularly. Alas, nothing. My hike is an elegy, not a pursuit.
This is not supposed to happen here, in the US. We have the most highly touted conservation tools in the world. Under the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, many populations of wildlife, particularly the ones people pursue, went from dire straits to abundance, thanks to hunters, fishers, state biologists, ethics, and a reliable source of funding. Deer, turkey, trout, elk all benefited, many others too. The Endangered Species Act empowered federal agencies and still more citizens in the cause of wildlife recovery, adding resources and powerful tools to recover still more species — alligators, grizzlies, butterflies, flowers. Tribes have restored much wildlife on and off their reservations, and contribute far beyond what their limited resources would suggest. Yet this uniquely American mix of conservation strategies, citizens and professionals, science and ethics, collaboration and regulation, public and private, couldn’t save the woodland caribou.
The loss of any species is ethically and legally verboten, so how did we let a charismatic, 250–500 pound mammal with big beautiful antlers disappear? Popular not polarizing, the only member of the deer family with antlers on males and females, woodland caribou could adorn an environmental group’s holiday card as easily as a hunter’s wall.
What went wrong on the ground is a familiar story with some twists. Without intent, people pushed caribou out of everywhere they lived, with roads, buildings, too much logging, too much hunting, also poaching. They were gone from northeastern states by the early 1900s. A few may have clung on in the Great Lakes states into the nineties. In the US Rockies we left them one last redoubt, the Selkirk Mountains, where they avoided predators in the dense woods, and in winter by heading into high country. Not much food up there in winter, but no predators. A good tradeoff, until we logged up the mountainsides, taking too many old trees with old man’s beard hanging off them — a lichen caribou rely on to survive the winter, which they reach by standing on snow with plate-sized hooves. Then snowmobile traffic picked up, with more people riding more powerful machines into more remote country, which — again unintentional, snowmobilers loved seeing caribou — pushed caribou around in the snow, burning their limited lichen calories. Cars took out some caribou on a highway through the mountains. Climate change seemed like it would be the nail in the coffin for these snow-loving beasts, but hasn’t yet become their bane, and maybe it won’t be, if we give them enough time and space. Instead, an unnatural gathering of predators put them over the edge. Mountain lions, bears and wolves came into caribou country on the heels of moose, elk and deer, which were drawn there by the food provided by young forests that grew after the older, lichen bearing trees were cut. The predators took advantage of the less defensible caribou when they came upon them. System collapse, inadvertently orchestrated entirely by us.
What went wrong at the management and policy level was also system collapse. Rather than a coordinated conservation effort, there was balkanization — different parts of the wildlife world moving in different directions, often at odds, paralleling trends in our national dialogue. Hunters put some skin in the game to help the last herd, but were uncharacteristically absent while that herd dwindled to nothing. State wildlife agencies gave recovery a good go, but seemed to lose heart after a 1990s reintroduction failed, thanks in part to an enterprising mountain lion named Mr. Nasty. Most environmental groups and their funders don’t really prioritize wildlife, particularly the North American kind, or have moved on to other priorities. Of those that do, some tried to save these caribou, including with Endangered Species Act lawsuits closing chunks of their habitat to threats like snowmobiles. But court orders couldn’t overcome an inexplicably lackluster effort by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and Forest Service, both responsible for their recovery.
I worked for one of those green groups, and won some of those lawsuits. It was a watershed moment for me to learn the limitations of litigation. All the lawsuits were successful — the judge in nearby Spokane was a hunter who understood what was happening — but they weren’t nearly enough. And I had to acknowledge they cost caribou some public support where they live, drove hunting conservation groups away, and dampened enthusiasm by state and federal managers. Fortunately, local Tribes stepped up to take over recovery efforts, but lacked enough resources and time.
“This is what extinction looks like”
I thought the loss of a species as charismatic as the caribou would ripple through all corners of the conservation world, through hunting groups, environmental organizations, animal welfare groups, through federal agencies and state agencies. I thought it would force a reckoning on all of us who care about wildlife, cause us to reevaluate what we are doing wrong, to find ways to work together better. I thought it would be a big deal. Instead they just fell into oblivion — “the state of something that is not remembered, used, or thought about any more.” (merriam-webster.com). There were a few thoughtful news stories, and some conservation groups mentioned the loss. But mostly they were just gone.
“This is what extinction looks like,” said Joe Scott with the Washington-based conservation group Conservation Northwest. The world is diminished, we move on, future generations never know.
“Caribou now need us”
You may have never heard of woodland caribou, but members of the Kalispel and Kootenai tribes have. Caribou sustained them through long, harsh Rocky Mountain winters before their decline. Both tribes became and remain the caribou’s last best hope in the US, maintaining management efforts in their waning years, and keeping alive the dream of a caribou return.
“They were abundant and easy to find in the winter… and they were fairly easy to access and hunt,” Ray Entz told the Northwest News Network. He is the Kalispel Tribe’s Director of Wildlife Resources. “They sustained [the Kalispels] in hard times. Well, the tables have kind of turned. Caribou now need us.”
And members of the Kootenai Tribe tell me the last Selkirk caribou is on loan to Canada, and they want it back with interest someday. Interest, as in offspring.
Teddy Roosevelt’s big bull
Teddy Roosevelt also heard of woodland caribou. An energetic conservationist archetype who enthuses hunter-conservationists to this day, boundless President Roosevelt dedicated a chapter in The Wilderness Hunter to a successful 1888 hunt for woodland caribou in the “frowning and rugged Selkirks.” He marveled at seeing a water shrew, a water ouzel, and a wolverine, reflected on earlier “fruitless and toilsome” woodland caribou hunts along Maine’s Munsungin River, and downed a bull with one shot, examining “with pride and pleasure…his massive form, sleek coat, and fine antlers.”
So caribou were a pretty big deal in parts of the US. Not bison big deal, but bountiful. Six or seven thousand are estimated to have once occupied the US northern Rockies. And who knows how many in the Great Lakes and Northeast.
Not anymore. Woodland caribou are the unrecovered ungulate. Ungulates are animals with hooves. While this includes cows and pigs, the wild ones are the members of the deer family, wild sheep and goats, and buffalo. All of these were pushed toward extinction in America, and all brought back from the brink, although some more than others. Bighorn sheep aren’t thriving, but have a solid toehold across the west. And where it once took Teddy Roosevelt weeks to find a single buffalo, they do well again in and around Yellowstone National Park, and in smaller conservation herds throughout the western US, increasingly on reservations, with much talk of further expansion. It is only the woodland caribou we have let ghost our country.
“If you have jurisdiction or responsibility for these animals, or just care — it’s time to redouble your efforts”
That’s Ray Entz again, with the Kalispel Tribe. And he’s right. It’s — still — time to come together to restore woodland caribou, as we’ve done for all the other ungulates, and plenty of non-ungulates. Some biologists estimate it will take only 10–15 years for forests in the Selkirks to grow back enough for the deer, elk, moose and predators to return to more typical terrain, creating space for caribou. More hope rests with British Columbia’s caribou recovery program, which could one day provide animals for a US reintroduction — the interest payment on that last Selkirk female, metaphorically loaned to BC’s program in Revelstoke.
Conservation legislation for caribou, and other creatures
We can foster this future, and the US stake in it, by passing a Woodland Caribou Conservation Act to establish a multinational species conservation fund, like we use to support the conservation of other international species including elephants, rhinos, tigers, great apes, and sea turtles. The fund would provide financial and technical support for BC’s caribou program, as well as for habitat restoration and eventually caribou reintroduction in the US. Now that we have eliminated woodland caribou from the continental US, their future here is wholly dependent on British Columbia.
Woodland caribou are just one harbinger of a coming wave of wildlife declines, extirpations, and extinctions if we don’t take more action to save other species from sharing their fate. Biologists need resources to recover troubled wildlife populations throughout the US, and we can provide those resources by passing the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act.
The Once & Future Hunt?
Those who don’t hunt may be inspired by thoughts of caribou on the ridge above while hiking a long draw below. Or on a snowy alpine meadow across the valley, as seen from the back of a snowmobile. Those of us who do hunt will probably never get the chance to pursue woodland caribou in the states ourselves. But we can dream for our kids and their kids, so that some of them may one day point their self-driving pickup to a suitable trailhead, shoulder grandpa’s Bear bow or copper-loaded .270 and some fresh bear spray, and hike up through the ferns, hemlocks and spruce with a once-in-a-lifetime caribou tag from Idaho, Washington, or Montana, channeling Teddy Roosevelt, or Salish ancestors.
Years ago, when I first dreamt of this Once and Future Hunt?, there was no clear need to frame it as a question. The Selkirk herd was on an upward trajectory, approaching 50 individuals. They were sometimes spotted spreading into Montana’s Purcell and Yaak mountains. One could envision recovery to a viable population, a return to state management, a slim but huntable surplus, a state agency offering one caribou hunting license in a hotly contested draw, and maybe auctioning off one more hunt for hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund caribou conservation, like they do for bighorn sheep and elk.
But we put too many obstacles in the caribou’s path to recovery, isolated them too well, ignored them for too long. The last US herd entered an extinction spiral. Personally, life got busy, I moved on to other priorities, next thing I knew the caribou were gone. The Kalispel and Kootenai Tribes didn’t move on though, and remain committed to seeing caribou south of the Medicine Line again. Given our past successes restoring wildlife, I can’t help but believe caribou will return here someday, and maybe not just to the Selkirks, maybe even to the shores of the Salmon River in central Idaho, or Lake Superior, or the Munsungin River in Maine. It won’t happen if we forget all about them though. Or without help from BC and First Nations in Canada. Or without a program and some funding. Hence the Woodland Caribou Conservation Act.
Hopefully the whole wildlife world will embrace the Tribes’ optimism and patient vision, set aside our differences, and come together to right this wrong. And maybe someone’s grandkid will one day draw a state tag and get one. And maybe some animal welfare advocates will complain about that. But it won’t matter, because the noumenon of the north woods will be back, and there will be enough to hunt, and therefore enough to survive, and eventually thrive.
