Jasper’s caribou breeding program slowly recovers after wildfire

Despite much of the centre's habitat being scorched in the Jasper wildfire, officials say recovery is proceeding well,

By this time, Jasper National Park’s caribou breeding centre was supposed to be nearly done, ready for pregnant cows to bed down behind its fence, safe from predators and working on replenishing the park’s diminishing herds.

This summer’s wildfire had other ideas.

“We’re still looking at putting together a restoration plan,” said Jean-Francois Bisaillon, the park’s caribou specialist.

The fire not only ravaged homes in the Jasper townsite and much-loved mountain landscapes, it also scorched plans for Canada’s first captive breeding centre for caribou.

Parks Canada is building a $40-million centre that would permanently pen up to 40 females and five males in a highly managed and monitored area of about one square kilometre surrounded by an electrified fence. The agency suggests the captive breeding could produce enough calves every year to bring Jasper’s herds to sustainable levels in a decade.

One of the park’s three herds has already disappeared and the others are down to a handful of animals.

But before that work can resume, Parks Canada has to deal with the impacts of the wildfire, which wasn’t brought under control until earlier this month.

Almost all the forest within the site that would have been used for caribou habitat was at least partly burned. About a quarter of its fenceposts were consumed, as was a good chunk of the slat fencing. Nearly all the caribou feeders were burned and electrical infrastructure damaged.