Woodland caribou. Photo courtesy of Junior Tremblay, Twitter.
A long-awaited provincial plan on how to protect the boreal woodland caribou is expected to be released next week.
The draft plan is the result of years of research and consultations with various groups, including the forestry and mining industry, Metis and First Nations communities and university researchers.
Kevin Murphy is an assistant deputy minister with Saskatchewan Environment. He says more information needs to be gathered about woodland caribou, including their actual numbers.
“We don’t have an actual population estimate for the boreal plain at present because our research is ongoing, so we are listing the status of the population as unknown at this time,” said Murphy.
Murphy says after the draft plan is released, officials will continue to monitor caribou numbers.
“The range plan calls for us to continue to do that work on an ongoing basis until we have scientific information that lets us know that we’ve reached a stable population and have recovered the caribou,” said Murphy.
Once the caribou draft plan is released, it will be available to the public on the Saskatchewan Environment website.
The boreal population of the woodland caribou has been listed as threatened under Canada’s Species at Risk Act since 2003.
In July, the federal government released the proposed federal action plan on the protection and recovery of the boreal caribou. The federal plan encourages provinces and territories to complete their range-planning work as soon as possible.