Near the Alberta border, in the Treaty 8 country north of Fort St. John, British Columbia has set aside about 45,000 hectares of Crown land to protect an animal that has been slipping away: the boreal caribou [1].
The new protection area, established with the Doig River First Nation, shields boreal caribou habitat and old boreal forest, with restrictions on forestry activity for the first four years of a decade-long protection [1]. It is a shared decision - the province and the First Nation are continuing to plan the land's future together [1].
Boreal caribou are federally threatened and red-listed in B.C., which makes a large, deliberate set-aside of their habitat a real reprieve [1]. For the herds that move through this forest, there is now more of it that will stay forest [1].
