Caribou Are Coming

Sun., Jan. 10, 1999

Staff

Endangered species

An effort to re-establish a wild caribou herd in Minnesota has taken a major step forward with agreement by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to be the lead government agency in the project.

The federal agency will help North Central Caribou Corp. move woodland caribou from Ontario’s Slate Islands on Lake Superior into the center of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area where they once roamed but have not lived for decades.

The transplanted caribou would be the first wild herd in Minnesota since the 1930s, when logging, overhunting and white-tailed deer pushed them out. A few have apparently wandered down from Canada in the years since.

The idea of establishing a new herd in the Boundary Waters area has been in the works for a decade. The Fish and Wildlife Service now must gain the signatures of a dozen other state, federal and Canadian provincial agencies and organizations on a partnership agreement.

The Minnesota herd would be only the second wild herd of caribou in the lower 48 states. The other is the small herd that wanders the Selkirk Mountains between British Columbia and the boundary area of North Idaho and Washington.

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