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The wildlife conservation community considers the caribou population one of the most crucial issues at the moment, explaining that a whole landscape and ecosystem depend on the caribou migration while industrialization, roads and disturbance are cited by conservationists as the main threats to their population. Caribou are also said to play a vital role for Northern communities, crucial to their survival. Many Indigenous groups have strongly advocated for, and worked towards, protecting the habitat of certain caribou populations. 

The Musiani Lab of the Biological Sciences department at the University of Calgary adds a perspective to the mix that is slightly different and therefore complementary to the context of conservationists. Caribou are a declining, keystone and federally-protected species — up to 50 per cent of the population is lost every eight years. Marco Musiani explains the caribou conservation project in a way that makes it easy to understand.

“There are populations of animals, and plants too, that have unique characteristics,” Musiani said.  “If we discover a population that has this unique characteristic and they are declining, we will know what we are losing forever, because those characteristics can never be reinvented. Not only within Caribou but all other wild animals, the key to conservation is variation within the species.” 

The more intraspecies variation, the more opportunity for adaptation to new and changing environments. 

By Holly Hastings, December 12 2019 —