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im still alive & post art here now https://road-kill-eater.tumblr.com/

The contiguous United States just lost its last wild caribou

The last caribou known to inhabit the contiguous United States has been removed from the wild. This week, a team of biologists working for the Canadian province of British Columbia captured the caribou—a female—in the Selkirk Mountains just north of the U.S.-Canada border. They then moved it to a captive rearing pen near Revelstoke as part of a controversial, last-ditch effort to preserve highly endangered herds. The female caribou is believed to be the last member of the last herd to regularly cross into the lower 48 states from Canada.

The 14 January capture of the caribou was “like losing a piece of the tribe in some way,” says Bart George, a wildlife biologist for the Kalispel tribe in Usk, Washington. It is one of two indigenous nations in the United States that have been pushing governments to maintain the cross-border caribou herd and protect its habitat.

In about a month, the British Columbia biologists plan to release the caribou—along with two other animals from another endangered herd—back into the wild, into a larger and more stable Canadian herd. The ultimate fate of these animals, however, is unclear. They are mountain caribou, a distinct ecotype of caribou found only in a forested swath of northwestern North America, which have become endangered because of habitat loss and other factors. Conservation efforts have failed to reverse population declines or prevent the complete extirpation of some herds at the southern end of the mountain caribou’s range, where they inhabit inland temperate rainforests. And biologists can’t say whether any caribou will again inhabit the contiguous United States. (There are herds of other types of caribou in Alaska.)

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Conservationists also fear removing caribou from the wild will ultimately lead to the lifting of protections for its habitat, especially if the animals never return. Both British Columbia and the United States have identified and protected large areas of “core habitat” for mountain caribou. But adjacent lands, especially in British Columbia, have continued to be heavily logged, contributing to caribou declines.

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Provincial officials say they have no current plans to remove caribou habitat protections for the southern herds. But, “It’s hard to believe that,” says Candace Batycki, a program director at the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative in Nelson, Canada. That’s because the province has lifted protections in the past after other caribou herds became extirpated and officials deemed it impossible to restore them.

#im kind of broken up over this #especially now that two herds in BC have just been declared extinct #because the canadian government wont stop FUCKING LOGGING OLD GROWTH FOREST #and now they are going to split bc with a pipeline and flood the salmon and orcas with oil #caribou

thingswithantlers

Despite shutdown, Trump administration continues work to begin oil drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

As the partial government shutdown drags on, the Trump administration is making sure some Interior Department employees continue work on one of its biggest, most controversial priorities: opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

Drilling opponents were quick to criticize the move, contrasting it with the overflowing trash cans and unattended public toilets in national parks managed by Interior, which have become a symbol of the continuing stalemate in Washington, D.C.

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But groups opposed to expanding oil development in Alaska’s Arctic criticized Interior’s decision to continue its NPR-A and Arctic refuge-related work during the partial shutdown.

One former Interior employee, now working for a law firm that represents environmental organizations that have sued the Trump administration over oil development, said it is “unusual” to press forward with public meetings during a shutdown.

“When I was with the government I never saw anything like that happen — generally, all non-essential work was basically shut down and employees are not even supposed to be checking their emails,” said Bridget Psarianos, a staff attorney with Trustees for Alaska who formerly worked as project manager for BLM’s Alaska office.

Psarianos asserted that the BLM Alaska employees who are continuing work to allow more oil development during the shutdown are acting under the authority of an administration “whose priorities are drilling on our public lands rather than performing essential government services, like picking up trash in National Parks.”

thingswithantlers

Arctic Reindeer Populations Are Dying Because Of Climate Change, A New Report Shows

Wild reindeer in the Arctic may soon be reduced to the stuff of children’s tales, according to a new report evaluating the impact of climate change in the area. Over the last twenty years, herd populations of wild reindeer and caribou in the Arctic tundra have dropped by more than half, according to the Arctic Report Card, an annual report that’s been releasing updates on the status of the Arctic environment since 2006. One of the report’s key findings: Arctic reindeer and caribou populations have declined by roughly 56 percent in the last two decades.

Scientists estimate there are around 2.1 million of the populations left in the area, though some herds experienced worse declines than others. In the Alaska-Canada region, for example, five herds were reduced by more than 90 percent, and don’t show any promising signs of recovering from this loss. The researchers noted that while it’s typical for herd numbers to fluctuate, many of the herds are exhibiting record low populations.

There is not one sole cause for the decline, but researchers in the report agreed that climate change in the Arctic was “an overarching factor.” Air temperatures in the Arctic from 2014 to 2018 have surpassed all previous records since 1900, and temperatures in the Arctic are warming at double the rate of the rest of the world, the report noted. In one example, caribou’s adaptability (or lack thereof) to the changing temperatures was linked to diminished pregnancy and calf survival rates due to consecutive years of poor weather conditions like drought.

Indigenous people in the area who rely on the reindeer and caribou for food security and as culturally significant symbols are facing a threat to their way of life due to the duration and severity of the declines, the report notes. Wild reindeer and caribou are also “a key species in the arctic food web,” the report continues, due to their essential role in the habitat’s food chain and ecosystem.

#alaska #climate change #permafrost #arctic