By Conor Mihell
When you think of wilderness, what comes to mind? If you’re a canoe tripper, wild rivers, pristine lakes and vast blank spots on the map are probably at the top of the list. Such characteristics often align with the habitat of boreal caribou (a distinct population of woodland caribou) in Canada’s North—and as wilderness trippers are all too aware, they’re becoming increasingly scarce in the face of a juggernaut of development. To embark on a canoe journey in caribou habitat is to experience some of the last remaining wilderness on the planet.
Now, paddlers can contribute to caribou stewardship in northwestern Ontario. The non-profit Friends of Wabakimi received three years of funding under Ontario’s Caribou Conservation Stewardship Program to recruit experienced canoeists and train them as community scientists, to gather basic observations of boreal caribou on selected lakes just outside of Wabakimi Provincial Park, about 240 km north of Thunder Bay. With the guidance of a panel of caribou experts, the Wabakimi Boreal Caribou Citizen Monitoring Project (WBCCMP) targets likely habitat where knowledge gaps exist, including areas adjacent to future logging operations. In 2024, the caribou project’s inaugural season, 13 volunteers logged 82 field surveys on wilderness canoe trips, documenting caribou scat, bedding sites, tracks, and a few exciting sightings of the elusive animals.
The project came about because Ontario’s boreal caribou range is shrinking steadily over time, resulting in Threatened status under federal and provincial species at risk legislation. Steady onslaughts of logging, mining, hydroelectric development and transmission corridors have pushed caribou populations from historic ranges in the Ottawa Valley, Temagami, French River and Algoma to present-day strongholds in Ontario’s far north. About half of the province’s historic caribou range has been lost forever, with corresponding losses in population. Ontario’s boreal caribou population is presently estimated around 5,000.
Boreal caribou have far different survival strategies than the closely related migratory caribou, familiar to canoe trippers in the Barrenlands of Canada’s central arctic. Whereas migratory caribou find safety in massive herds and move in search of browse, their counterparts of the boreal forest, ranging from northern British Columbia and the southern Yukon and Northwest Territories east to Labrador, are far more secretive and sedentary. Boreal caribou exist at low population densities in old-growth spruce forests, where large, island-pocked bodies of water provide refuges for females to swim and give birth to calves away from predators.
Research shows that deforestation alters habitat to be more suitable for moose; with moose come greater numbers of wolves and black bears; and roads and transmission corridors further tip the balance by affording easy mobility to predators. This pattern has played out across Ontario’s historic range in a “slow-motion crisis,” explains Jim Schaefer, a boreal caribou researcher and professor of conservation biology at Trent University.
Studies have repeatedly shown that habitat disturbance must be kept below 35 percent to provide boreal caribou with a 60 percent chance of self-sufficiency. This benchmark was set by the federal government in 2012; however, it has never been adhered to by provinces like Ontario, where forestry has been granted a permanent exemption from Species at Risk legislation. Meanwhile, seven of eight discrete boreal caribou ranges in Ontario that overlap with commercial logging have declining population trends.
The federal government is legally obligated to intervene when a province is not doing enough to protect at-risk species. Rather than imposing emergency measures, like it did in a last-ditch effort to resuscitate three populations of boreal caribou in Quebec in 2024, Ottawa negotiated a caribou agreement with Ontario. The agreement puts the spotlight on Ontario to finally take action. Conserving caribou demands long-term vision, says Schaefer. “This is the most formidable conservation challenge we have in Canada.”
Last summer, WBCCMP survey volunteers paddled, portaged and camped on canoe routes just outside of Wabakimi Provincial Park, making more important contributions to this challenge. Returning to their campsite one afternoon, volunteers excitedly shared their sighting of a cow and calf caribou swimming between islands, the first sighting of the project. New friendships were made as paddlers discovered a new sense of purpose. The project is providing something special and unexpected for experienced wilderness canoe trippers: a deeper meaning in the typical canoe trip, one that contributes to an important conservation goal. In gathering the basic data of caribou “vitals”—evidence of breeding behaviour and survival—canoeists are not only fighting to save an endangered species, but they’re also demonstrating the value of increasingly endangered spaces.
The Friends of Wabakimi is undertaking the second year of caribou surveys in the summer of 2025, requiring up to 30 volunteers. For more information about the project and how to get involved, visit their website at www.wabakimi.org.