There was an audible murmur in the room when premier Christy Clark announced a new program to protect B.C.'s caribou population.
The luncheon crowd was several hundred delegates deep at the Civic Centre for the B.C. Natural Resources Forum, and it was already pre-disclosed that Clark's speech was going to include an announcement about caribou.
The animal has one of the greatest endangerment levels of B.C.'s wild kingdom. What was surprising to the audience was the amount of money the province pledged.
"We are announcing today $27 million to support an iconic species that is under threat," she said.
"That's going to enhance habitat protection, it's going to grow our ability to do research and monitoring, it's going to support a maternal penning project, it's going to help us control predator management. All of those things are going to support not just our hunting and guiding industries which very much depend on making sure our ecosystems are in balance; not just our environment, which all of us want to protect for our children and their children; but also a lot of the industries who operate out there and need certainty on the landbase."
Several animal varieties in B.C. face extinction, if human intervention is not careful and concerted. There are birds, reptiles, water creatures, even insects on the provincial endangered species radar. Some of the best known are the Vancouver Island marmot, grey whale, bighorn and Dall's sheep, and - especially close to home in the Prince George region - is the critical concern over the Nechako white sturgeon.
Not far away are precipitously declining caribou herds. There are 51 woodland caribou herds throughout B.C., some of the most critically endangered ones within range of Prince George. These have been observed for years, and many measures taken in the past by government to try halting their declines.
This has not worked. Clark said "stronger action is needed" and that's what the new investment will trigger.
According to the Ministry of Forests, this year's installment will be $8 million, with an additional $19 million over the next two years.
Government data indicated there are some 19,000 caribou in the province (divvied up among the isolated herds), compared to between 30,000 and 40,000 at the turn of the last century when the presence of caribou was considered widespread.
"Biodiversity is really important in B.C. We know people want to protect threatened and endangered species, which many of these herds are," Clark said.
"Some of them have already been extirpated, they are gone, and they are never coming back. I think that's an investment British Columbians want us to make."
While some of these measures will hopefully help the caribou specifically, some of the measures are expected to have ripple benefits to other aspects of the ecosystem as well.
