|
Don't blame the caribou ... |
|
January 17, 2012 |
One of the big attractions in our local Boundary
County Museum is a stuffed albino caribou.
People from the world over stop in, take a
picture, and go home, many from places where
caribou are common.
Their caribou don't raise as much stink ... we
hardly know they're here ... if, in fact,
they are. Somehow, it isn't our
caribou raising the controversy, it's us.
While we don't see them often, our caribou are
up in the high country ... munching on the
lichen they love so well. The caribou don't seem
to make a preference when it comes to which
country that high country is in, the U.S. or
Canada.
What we do down here doesn't seem to concern
them much at all ... they get along fine without
us. History shows they've never had much of a
problem with us, either.
The caribou don't seem to mind one way or
another ... they do what caribou do.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to
set aside around six-hundred square miles of "our"
area, meaning the U.S., more than 200,000 of them in Boundary
County, as critical habitat for an animal akin
to that museum display, an animal rare here, but
common and not too far away ... the elusive
Selkirk caribou.
The one in the museum was rare for being an
albino. The normally colored caribou to which it
is kin are rare in Idaho, but not in British
Columbia.
The late Paul Flinn, a conservation officer in
his prime, a reliable county
historian as he got older and a trusted source
of fact, came across a herd of caribou on the
U.S. side of the border during his
wanderings high up in the Selkriks in the late
1950s and early 1960s, the first time anyone had
documented the animal's presence in this part of
the world.
He was the first to obtain sign, follow it, and to
bring back his
findings, in writing and on film, as well as with the then new-fangled
motion picture.
Unwittingly, he set in motion be dilemma we're
looking at today.
If you do a Google search of "Paul Flinn
Caribou," you'll learn how excited the
scientific and biological world was by his
findings, as well as the great lengths he went
to to verify his fleeting discovery.
Flinn, according to the record, wore out several
pair of snow shoes over a period of years
trekking into the high country to study these
fine animals ... animals that lived "up in the
area more likely assocated with mountain goats,"
who "easily outran him," a fact he came to
attribute to the animal's unique hoof ... which
spead out on impact into an amazingly effective
snow shoe ... "they rarely sank in more than a
few inches, while with my snowhoses I'd sink in
up to my knees," he wrote.
Flinn went to great lengths to keep track
of these magnificent animals,
going up year after year, watching the herd
diminish.
"They seem to like roads, and they don't mind
the presence of people," he wrote. "They seem to
like, of all things, grease; I've seen them
standing on top of equipment licking at the
cups."
He counted and documented nearly 40 caribou on
the U.S. side of the Selkirks, but then noticed
their numbers drop off ... from a sizeable herd
to a few, then none.
He never stopped looking, even after he retired.
"They must be," he wrote early on, "the slowest
breeding big animals in the world."
Then he began suspecting something else.
"His" caribou, he came to believe and to tell
anyone who'd listen, went back up into their
range in British Columbia, Canada.
"You don't have to be too intelligent to know
that they weren't happy here," he said.
"Especially not after we started
introducing grizzlies
and wolves ... they went back across the border
into Canada."
Canada isn't worried much about the plight of
the caribou ... they have plenty.
Canadians work, build roads and log in shared
territory ... and the
caribou don't seem to mind.
The caribou haven't heard that we in the U.S.
... where one or two might cross over to sniff
out the territory once in a blue moon, are thinking about keeping
people out of "their" territory on this side of
the border at all costs.
No roads, no access, no snowmobiles ... no
intrusion by people.
It seems that an "if we build it, they will
come" approach is being taken by our federal
government.
In the movie, Kevin Costner cleared out a
cornfield, built a "Field of Dreams," and the baseball greats did come ...
the ghosts of heroes from days gone by.
In that plan, nearly at the brink of adoption by
those who stand for the environment and the
betterment of the world, the caribou will come
once we stop building and the world will be a better place
They'll be
upset to know that we've also set aside that
land and stayed out of it for the grizzly bear.
I don't think those people, not the
environmentalists who took the case to court nor
the federal officials who are now mandated by a
judicial decision to come up with a plan, have
conferred with the caribou
... who don't seem to want to live here anyway
and who seem to be doing quite well in Canada.
I'm sure the caribou appreciate all the effort ... but
it seems that they know better than we what
works for them.
Based on Paul Flinn's findings, the caribou may
have gone back to Canada to eat the grease ...
people, roads and logging are still allowed
there in their shared habitat and the caribou
seem to be doing fine. Maybe those great animals
would appreciate it if we cleared some roads,
did a bit of logging, and made it easier for
them to survive down here?
But then, it may be too hard for the caribou to live
down here in the U.S.
... people there seem to make no sense, eh?
Perhaps the caribou are smarter than we are. |
|
|
|
|
