Recovering endangered species is a difficult and often controversial task that challenges status quo land uses. Southern Mountain caribou are a threatened ecotype of caribou that historically ranged in southwestern Canada and northwestern USA and epitomize the tension between resource extraction, biodiversity conservation, and Indigenous Peoples' treaty rights. Human-induced habitat alteration is considered the ultimate cause of caribou population declines, whereby an increased abundance of primary prey-such as moose and deer-elevates predator populations and creates unsustainable caribou mortality. Here we focus on the Klinse-Za and Quintette subpopulations, part of the endangered Central Group of Southern Mountain caribou in British Columbia. These subpopulations were trending toward immediate extirpation until a collaborative group initiated recovery by implementing two short-term recovery actions. We test the effectiveness of these recovery actionsmaternity penning of adult females and their calves, and the reduction of a primary predator, wolves-in increasing vital rates and population growth.Klinse-Za received both recovery actions, whereas Quintette only received wolf reductions, providing an opportunity to test efficacy between recovery actions. Between 1995 and 2021, we followed 162 collared female caribou for 414 animal-years to estimate survival and used aerial counts to estimate population abundance and calf recruitment. We combined these data in an integrated population model to estimate female population growth, total population abundance, and recovery action effectiveness. Results suggest that the subpopulations were declining rapidly (λ = 0.90-0.93) before interventions and would have been functionally extirpated (<10 animals) within 10-15 years. Wolf reduction increased population growth rates by ~0.12 for each subpopulation.Wolf reduction halted the decline of Quintette caribou and allowed them to increase (λ = 1.05), but alone would have only stabilized the Klinse-Za

Indigenous Peoples around the northern hemisphere have long relied on caribou for subsistence and for ceremonial and community purposes. Unfortunately, despite recovery efforts by federal and provincial agencies, caribou are currently in decline in many areas across Canada. 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. Here, we review these 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-km 2 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

Effective action planning for recovering endangered populations of boreal caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) requires an understanding of the functional interactions between: (1) responses by predators to current and prospective future habitat conditions, (2) responses of prey to population and habitat conditions influencing apparent competition, and (3) residual effects of past population bottlenecks. Monitoring recovery trajectories when human-altered habitats are restored requires consideration of many cause-effect linkages operating among multiple species and across multiple ecological scales. We developed a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) to help frame potential functional responses of 2 predators (wolves, bears) and 2 prey (moose, caribou) to a large-scaled, silviculturallybased, habitat restoration experiment conducted within the Cold Lake caribou herd area in the Alberta oil sands. The full BBN consists of three general components: (1) those related to predator and prey movements, including use of non-restored and restored habitat features as those opposed conditions affect travel speed and search rates of predators; (2) those related to daily and seasonal use of habitat and how that may affect encounter probabilities between predators and prey; and (3) those related to the probability of kill given an encounter between predator and prey. These components structured in a BBN architecture support the application of the basic parameters in Holling's disc equation, particularly: seasonal predator search rates and probability of a kill given an encounter (i.e., the area of effective search). We used the BBN to map the functional response spatially and to assess the dynamics of the predators and prey (demographics and response to restoration treatments). Our understanding of these hypothetical responses will, in the future, help shape management actions designed to reduce predator density and prey risk. To demonstrate the management utility of this approach, we plan to set BBN prior probabilities for each model component using 4 types of data: (1) habitat conditions measured semi-annually; (2) GPS relocation data from 128 individual predators (77 wolves; 51 bears) and 34 prey (25 moose and 9 caribou); (3) kill site investigations; and (4) DNA analyses of prey species density.PeerJ Preprints | https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1996v1 | CC-BY 4.0 Open Access | rec

Effective action planning for recovering endangered populations of boreal caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) requires an understanding of the functional interactions between: (1) responses by predators to current and prospective future habitat conditions, (2) responses of prey to population and habitat conditions influencing apparent competition, and (3) residual effects of past population bottlenecks. Monitoring recovery trajectories when human-altered habitats are restored requires consideration of many cause-effect linkages operating among multiple species and across multiple ecological scales. We developed a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) to help frame potential functional responses of 2 predators (wolves, bears) and 2 prey (moose, caribou) to a large-scaled, silviculturally-based, habitat restoration experiment conducted within the Cold Lake caribou herd area in the Alberta oil sands. The full BBN consists of three general components: (1) those related to predator and prey movements, including use of non-restored and restored habitat features as those opposed conditions affect travel speed and search rates of predators; (2) those related to daily and seasonal use of habitat and how that may affect encounter probabilities between predators and prey; and (3) those related to the probability of kill given an encounter between predator and prey. These components structured in a BBN architecture support the application of the basic parameters in Holling’s disc equation, particularly: seasonal predator search rates and probability of a kill given an encounter (i.e., the area of effective search). We used the BBN to map the functional response spatially and to assess the dynamics of the predators and prey (demographics and response to restoration treatments). Our understanding of these hypothetical responses will, in the future, help shape management actions designed to reduce predator density and prey risk. To demonstrate the management utility of this approach, we plan to set BBN prior probabilities for each model component using 4 types of data: (1) habitat conditions measured semi-annually; (2) GPS relocation data from 128 individual predators (77 wolves; 51 bears) and 34 prey (25 moose and 9 caribou); (3) kill site investigations; and (4) DNA analyses of prey species density.