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Down the same caribou road

So the government is set to cordon off another huge section of B.C, just to play politics with the lives of caribou.
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So the government is set to cordon off another huge section of B.C, just to play politics with the lives of caribou.

As an active outdoors person, member of the Prince George Snowmobile Club, and a local helicopter pilot that worked on various wildlife counts (including caribou), I have been down this road lots in the last 15 years.

Back when the B.C. government science team and the Mountain Caribou Recovery Implementation Plan was being developed by the Recovery Implementation Group, the sole target was the snowmobile community. The resource group, the heli-skiers, snowcats, cross country/downhill skiers, snow-shoers and hikers all got a pass. Basically, the least intrusive group, the snowmobile community, were the whipping boy and the sacrifice offered to recover caribou populations, in order to satisfy the environmental lobby. That was the decision of the RIGgroup after meeting for two days in 2005.

All it took was for the RIG group to pretend that wolves are suicidal and would struggle up a snowmobile trail to get to the alpine, where the snow was so deep a wolf could not move, in January, February and March. Those silly wolves must have all died because the caribou population takes a real hit from the wolves in April and May when the snow hardens up at night to make travel anywhere in the mountains easy for a wolf. The postulation that wolves needed snowmobiles was just an illogical fable to allow the RIG to proceed as planned and ban snowmobiles.

Naturally, the results of restricting snowmobile traffic has been a steady decline in caribou populations in off limits areas. Of course with no one around anymore, the wolves moved in for the kill, as the stats show.

What is absolutely amazing is that the results of banning snowmobiling are not being examined for value. The results of the ban are an embarrassment to the government and are therefore carefully ignored. There is no science to support a ban that had/has no positive results and turns out that the ban might actually be a negative action for caribou survival.

The government is scrambling to manipulate the caribou population counts by changing grouping and area boundaries in an effort to dilute the obvious positive effect the presence of snowmobile traffic has had on local caribou populations compared to off limit areas.

One only has to compare the rapid decline in caribou populations in areas where snowmobiles have never been allowed, such as parks like Jasper, Banff and Wells Gray to areas like the Hart Range where snowmobile activity has gone on for 40 years.

What is at stake here is our snowmobile recreation, but for the government professionals the stakes are even higher. Their professional reputations are staked on making snowmobiles bad. I've been interested enough to read lots of these professional papers and I immediately noticed they like to refer to each others studies. So I would go to that study of reference and read that one as well to see how a fact comes about. I noticed a "pile-on" effect.

When one writer has a speculation of a possibility, the next writer piles it on as a fact in his report, and so it goes on to the next guy to build on as an actionable fact. And it all started from idle speculation like an old wives tale. I emailed one author to ask why he inserted some idle speculation about snowmobiles in his study just out of the blue for no reason,but he refused to respond to questions. However, if some professional does a study that raises questions that need to be considered, in order to validate a conclusion, they get ignored. In 1997 to 2000, Astrid Vik Stronen did a three year study on the Telkwa herd and applied the Alldredge and Johnson idea that "... just because a result is statistically significant does not mean that it is biologically meaningful (displacement)." None of the government people today will entertain that train of thought however, because that would mean a results model has to be applied to snowmobile activity and its effect on caribou. Not imagined or speculated effect, but real effects. The only conclusion would be snowmobiles have no effect and might even be beneficial in deterring the wolves from taking so many caribou. So nobody quotes Astrid.

Logically, and scientifically, all the wasted money and time spent on pissing off snowmobilers should be stopped, and the money and effort focused on controlling predation and methods to interfere with or reduce predation. The snowmobile community, being the greatest user of the outdoors during a critical season for the caribou, should be the group the government goes to in order to meet those goals, and not tossed aside as a handy political whipping boy.

Use the stats comparing parks to snowmobile areas.

In 2002, Seips counted and recorded the population in the Hart Range as between 331 to 359 caribou and listed the group as stable.

In the federal 2017 report, the Hart Range count is 375 and not stable, but declining? What with that change of heart?

Now compare an areas like Wells Gray Park. No snowmobiling has ever been allowed in that park, so the caribou should be doing amazing, right?

In 1995, the population was 628, and in 2015 the population is 321 including 121 in the park. The caribou outside the park in snowmobile areas are doing better than the animals in the park. Look at Banff and Jasper - big losers as well.

The precautionary principle is another doozy that crops up regularly. It says that unless there is full scientific certainty that snowmobiles do no harm, then as a precaution, snowmobiles should be banned. Used that way the PP is an emotional tool to make people (not caribou) feel good.

The precautionary principle can also be applied for logical reasons as well. Wolves avoid snowmobiles and wolves kill caribou, therefore as a precaution, until it can proven with scientific certainty that this is not true, snowmobiles should be allowed in caribou areas to save caribou. So far the results show that that application of the precaution cautionary principle is more valid than the government use of the precautionary principle. After all, the caribou are being killed and eaten and not stared at to death.

-- Lee Sexsmith is a resident of Prince George and a member of the Prince George Snowmobile Club and the B.C. Snowmobile Federation