Will Canada Issue an Emergency Order to Protect Caribou? Will Canada Issue an Emergency Order to Protect Caribou?

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If it doesn't happen, they're 'doomed,' says Okanagan Indian Band Chief Dan Wilson.
Sarah Cox
2 Jun 2026
2 Jun 2026The Tyee
Sarah Cox is The Tyee's biodiversity reporter.
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If it doesn't happen, they're 'doomed,' says Okanagan Indian Band Chief Dan Wilson. … Article written by Sarah Cox.
The Syilx Okanagan Nation is calling on Ottawa to take emergency action to protect the last three caribou herds in its territory, which are struggling to survive as old-growth logging destroys their critical habitat.
On Monday, the nation announced it has formally petitioned the federal government to step in with a rarely used emergency order under Canada's Species at Risk Act.
The order would give Ottawa the power to make decisions that normally fall to the province, such as whether to issue logging permits in core caribou habitat in southeast B.C.
"We expect the federal government to issue an emergency order, and if they don't, I'm sad to say that those herds are doomed," Okanagan Indian Band Chief Dan Wilson told The Tyee. Okanagan Indian Band is one of the seven bands and communities that make up the larger Syilx Okanagan Nation.
Wilson said the B.C. government continues to sanction logging in critical habitat for the southern mountain caribou herds, which rely on the rare and disappearing inland temperate rainforest for food and shelter.
"Caribou are dependent on old-growth forests for habitat, and the old growth is continuing to be harvested at an alarming rate," he said. "There's a lot more that could be done."
The three populations in question — the Frisby-Boulder, Central Selkirk and Columbia North herds — are known as deep-snow caribou because they use their snowshoe-like hoofs to balance on snow so they can reach hair lichens, their main source of winter food. Hair lichens grow in profusion only on old trees.
Deep-snow caribou are found nowhere else in the world but in B.C. In 2005, B.C. had 18 deep-snow caribou herds. Eight herds are now locally extinct, while the others are hanging on by a hoof.
Wilson said only eight animals remain in the Frisby-Boulder herd, near Revelstoke, B.C., which is now functionally extirpated.
The dwindling Central Selkirk herd has 27 animals, while about 185 animals remain in the Columbia North herd.
In a press release, the Syilx Okanagan Nation said that while the Columbia North population has increased, the growth "remains fragile" and is largely unrelated to habitat recovery.
The herds are the focus of elaborate recovery measures led or supported by the B.C. government.
Those efforts include shooting wolves and other predators that gain easy access to caribou through logging roads and other human disturbances, and flying pregnant caribou to a pen to give birth, so their calves will be strong enough to stand a better chance of surviving in the fractured landscape when they are released.
Wilson called the B.C. government's recovery measures "ad hoc, fragmented and inefficient to reverse the long-term habitat degradation and population decline."
B.C.'s Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship did not respond to The Tyee's questions before press time.
Waiting to hear from Canada's environment minister
The Species at Risk Act gives Ottawa the authority to intervene when a species faces imminent threats to its survival or recovery.
But the federal government has issued emergency orders only twice since the act was passed in 2002 — once to protect the western chorus frog in Quebec and once to protect the greater sage-grouse in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
It's now up to Julie Dabrusin, the federal minister of the environment, climate change and nature, to determine if the three caribou herds are facing imminent threats to their survival and recovery. ...