BC has a draft plan for woodland caribou recovery. The province has made and agreement with the gov't of Canada to work together on a plan. The alternative was the federal gov't stepping in with the Species At Risk Act and take over the whole project with some potentially heavy handed steps (large swaths of land closed, etc.), similar to the ESA in the US.
It's still in the infancy of planning, but as a stakeholder just across the border form you in ID, I'm going to ensure that recovery plans go ahead with the introduction of herds in the south Selkirks. the recent recovery efforts were pathetic, and pandered too much to other user groups without the habitat and caribou at the heart of the plans. This time it should be different.
The plan for the south herd is to have captive breeding (not maternal pens) in Revelstoke and build a herd for introduction at some good numbers. Perhaps some predator and alternate prey measures will take place during that time. Critical habitat (sub-alpine old growth) will remain protected, and hopefully they will increase the these protected areas.
It's a hot button topic in BC and I don't think we're going to let a large mammal species become extirpated or extinct without sinking some real time money and effort into.
Caribou need three things to survive: habitat, habitat, and habitat.
https://engage.gov.bc.ca/caribou/section11agreement/
As for hunting in the lower 48, maybe a wish for your grandkids, but you never know. I think manageable populations will be established, but they will have so much stacked against them, hunting might be tough to justify, they are a very sensitive niche species. I think having them back on the landscape would be the best we can hope for right now.
