Photo: Contributed

A photo of a female Southern Mountain Woodland Caribou.

The search is on for helping hands to save one of Canada’s most endangered caribou herds.

Now in its fourth year, the Arrow Lakes Caribou Society's Maternity Pen Project is aimed at recovering the central Selkirk subpopulation of the southern mountain woodland caribou.

However, with an upcoming feasibility review approaching — and pen construction completed in the winter of 2022 — this year is a pivotal one, with the project in need of more volunteers to keep it progressing.

"I wouldn't say we’ve struggled, but I think it's been an ongoing effort,” said society member Sky Cunningham about the need for volunteers.

Most of the society’s volunteer work pertains to collecting tree lichen, which is dried to keep the caribou fed. Last year, volunteers collected 300 kilograms. Cunningham said that the volunteer opportunities will start again in late June or early July when the society will organize different volunteer events. The effort will go towards collecting lichen for 2026.

Individuals are free to join a volunteer event that they see advertised by the society, or can host their own in their town. The society also joined the Columbia Basin Environmental Education Network which allows teachers to request a field trip, hosted by the society.

The pen is located in the Kuskanax Creek drainage near Naksup Hot Springs, roughly 10 kilometres outside of Naksup. Pregnant caribou are captured each year in March and April and released back into the wild after calving in July.

This species of caribou is listed as threatened under the Species at Risk Act, and the central Selkirk subpopulation is the southernmost population in North America. The population declined from 92 to 25 caribou from 2010 to 2023 — with an 87 per cent decline from 1997 to 2021.

Habitat fragmentation, the presence of unnatural predators and human recreation remain at the top of the list of reasons why these caribou have struggled to maintain healthy population numbers, said Cunningham.

This year, 11 animals were captured and, although this year's pen summary hasn’t been completed yet, the society managed to increase calf recruitment by 25 per cent in 2023. Each animal is tagged and numbered to help track to further the understanding of the caribou's long-term recovery.

Photo: Contributed

Arrow Lakes Caribou Society volunteers foraging for lichen.

Through the contributions of the First Nations, local Naksup organizations, grant contractors and funders and volunteers, the project has managed to stay afloat to provide more data on the impact of maternity penning and its effectiveness.

Cunningham said that some of the challenges of keeping the project on the right track include securing continuous funding and achieving a balanced male-female calf ratio, as out of the five calves born, four of them were male and one was a female in 2024.

“We're hoping for more females in the coming years of maternity ... to increase the herd.”

The society also relies on various grants for operations, and they are hoping to receive more support this year. Cunningham said that they have been lucky to receive funding help from a variety of different sources, but, each year, continued advocacy for caribou recovery is what makes the difference.

• Anyone interested in getting involved with the society's lichen collection can visit the Arrow Lakes Caribou website or send an email to [email protected].