What’s in a name?

Caribou Bog.  Caribou Island.  Caribou Lake.  Caribou River.

There’s also, Caribou Barren, Caribou Brook, Caribou Cove, and Caribou Harbour.

And there’s, Caribou Marsh, Caribou Plains, Caribou Channel, and Caribou Pond.

A quick glimpse at a map of Nova Scotia reveals a whack of place names with the word “Caribou”.

For instance, to catch the ferry to Prince Edward Island, you depart from “Caribou Ferry”, near the community of “Caribou” and beside the community of “Central Caribou” just down from “Big Caribou River”, and the boat will travel through “Caribou Harbour” and into “Caribou Channel” with “Caribou Island” on your left, and “Caribou-Munroes Island Provincial Park” on your right.  You get my drift.

Nova Scotia is peppered with “caribou” place names.  From this, it doesn’t take a great leap of logic to conclude that there used to be lots of caribou in Nova Scotia.

Indeed, woodland caribou used to occur all over Nova Scotia, from one end of the province to the other.  Sadly, today there are none.  Nova Scotia’s woodland caribou are now extinct, with the last known sighting occurring in 1921.  When archaeologists examine old shell midden sites in the province, they routinely come across discarded caribou bones.

A species that used to be an intricate part of Nova Scotia’s woodlands is now gone, with only their place names now marking their former presence on the landscape.

Just imagine how it must have felt to see a lone caribou walking peacefully on the far shore of a remote lake, or trampling through the deep forests of Nova Scotia’s interior back in the day.  It must have been quite the sight to behold.

Let’s not let what’s happened in Nova Scotia, and elsewhere in the Maritimes, become a harbinger for woodland caribou in the rest of Canada.  Woodland caribou right across the boreal forest are in trouble.  Listed as a threatened species, many of the populations are in free fall and are at risk of extirpation.

The Canadian government has just released a proposed recovery strategy to help bring back the woodland caribou, but it doesn’t go far enough to protect the caribou’s habitat and it only gives the caribou a 60% chance at long term survival.  CPAWS thinks we can do better than that.  We must do better than that.

To learn more and to add your voice to growing list of Canadians asking the government to do more to protect this iconic species, please visit here.

~Chris Miller