Project Description:

In response to recent and dramatic declines of mountain caribou populations within their traditional territory, West Moberly First Nations and Saulteau First Nations (collectively, the "Nations") came together to create a new vision for caribou recovery on the lands they have long stewarded and shared. The Nations focused on the Klinse-Za subpopulation, which had once encompassed so many caribou that West Moberly Elders remarked that they were "like bugs on the landscape." The Klinse-Za caribou declined from ~250 in the 1990s to only 38 in 2013, rendering Indigenous harvest of caribou nonviable and infringing on treaty rights to a subsistence livelihood. In collaboration with many groups and governments, this Indigenous-led conservation initiative paired short-term population recovery actions, predator reduction and maternal penning, with long-term habitat protection in an effort to create a self-sustaining caribou population.

Project Outcomes or Intended Outcomes:

Recovery actions and the promising evidence that the abundance of Klinse-Za caribou has more than doubled from 38 animals in 2013 to 101 in 2021, representing rapid population growth in response to recovery actions. With looming extirpation averted, the Nations focused efforts on securing a landmark conservation agreement in 2020 that protects caribou habitat over a 7986 km² area. The Agreement provides habitat protection for >85% of the Klinse-Za subpopulation (up from only 1.8% protected pre-conservation agreement) and affords moderate protection for neighboring caribou subpopulations (29%–47% of subpopulation areas, up from 0%–20%). This Indigenous-led conservation initiative has set both the Indigenous and Canadian governments on the path to recover the Klinse-Za subpopulation and reinstate a culturally meaningful caribou hunt. This effort highlights how Indigenous governance and leadership can be the catalyst needed to establish meaningful conservation actions, enhance endangered species recovery, and honor cultural connections to now imperiled wildlife.

Project Description:

Biigtigong Nishnaabeg has developed a (draft) caribou Stewardship Plan for its traditional territory, which includes a portion of the Lake Superior Caribou Range and the discontinuous distribution between the LSCR and the continuous ranges to the north. The Stewardship Plan contains 11 interlinked strategies. As the project unfolds we anticipated that technical elements of each of the 11 strategies will be further developed. The important first component of the strategy is re-establishing caribou on Michipicoten Island, so that the population there can grow and be used as a source of animals to re-populate the nearby mainland.

Project Outcomes or Intended Outcomes:

The long-term goal of Stewardship Plan is: "Establish a secure and self-sustaining population of caribou in the area centered on the northeast portion of Lake Superior, with particular emphasis on the area encompassed by the Biigtigong Nishnaabeg Title Lands"
The Plan has four objectives under this goal, that relate to protecting/managing caribou on the offshore islands, managing caribou populations on the mainland, collaboration with other First Nations, governments and other parties, and raising cultural awareness of caribou and their role in the ecosystem and Indigenous culture.

Project Description:
Due to sharply decreasing populations, boreal woodland caribou are an animal of concern for Canadian and Indigenous peoples. In north-central Saskatchewan, Indigenous and non-Indigenous governments, researchers, policy makers, land users, communities, and industry have faced multiple challenges working together to support caribou populations. Some of these challenges are due to cultural differences in ways of knowing and understanding the natural world in general, and wildlife in particular. The language of ethics and values may provide a working platform for intercultural conversations about wildlife conservation. Using multispecies ethnography, participatory community-based research, and visual methodologies, this dissertation study documents the ethical teachings and values that structure how Woodland Cree, Métis, and Euro-Canadian more-than-human communities in and around La Ronge, Saskatchewan engage with woodland caribou and conservation strategies. Four key themes have emerged from these community teachings and values as important to woodland caribou protection:

1. respectful relationships with other-than-human beings and land;
2. responsibilities to protect and care for these;
3. intercultural, land-based education;
4. intercultural working together.

These themes are employed in an ethical framework, which will be used to recommend a practical means of partnering with both Indigenous and Euro-Canadian ways of knowing in Saskatchewan.

Project Outcomes or Intended Outcomes:
Results of this dissertation study are anticipated to build on previous research that has begun to document Indigenous ethics and values about woodland caribou in Saskatchewan and across Canada, and add to ongoing cross-cultural management efforts in Saskatchewan to address the ethical challenges of woodland caribou conservation together.

Immediate outcomes include:

1. a practical model for ethical intercultural management of woodland caribou;
2. recommendations for implementation into policy;
3. a thoroughly documented process for addressing cross-cultural ethical challenges with respect to wildlife, across sectors.

Long-term outcomes will include:

1. more ethical and sustainable relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples and woodland caribou.