PEI Caribou: What Happened?

Before settlers came to PEI, the province's wildlife was much more diverse. Black bears, caribou, and wolves, oh my!

So today, we are going to look at the caribou of PEI. Which, if you're an Islander, have visited, or have some knowledge of PEI, you will know they are no longer here. In fact, many of the larger animals that once lived here are gone, including the caribou, wolves, black bears, and lynx. Yes, we had lynx!

Caribou like this would have once been found in all Maritime Provinces.
(Photo Credit: Zack Metcalfe, The Guardian)

So, as usual, your little history lesson. When the ice from the last major ice age receded - about 11,700 years ago, PEI was connected to the mainland by the land bridge. This bridge, before disappearing an estimated 5,000 years ago, allowed animals to cross back and forth between the mainland and PEI. During this time, the PEI climate was more like a tundra (cold weather and a short growing season) so the animals reflected that. One of these early mammals is believed to be the caribou, followed by the wolves, their natural predator.

In Doug Sobey's 2007 paper, An Analysis of the Historical Records for the Native Mammalian Fauna of Prince Edward Island, the earliest written record of the caribou was in 1672, which is much later than when Jacques Cartier "discovered" PEI in 1534. This record stated that there were few caribou on the Island. But, according to Rosemary Curley, a retired biologist, by 1672 Europeans had been fishing and fur trading on PEI for over a century which would have impacted the population of the caribou.

Awesome size comparison for moose, elk, caribou, and deer. As you can see, caribou are much smaller than moose and their antlers are very different. (Image Credit: Allison Gober, Deer Differences)

According to this earliest recording about the caribou by Nicholas Denys (1672), there were low numbers of caribou on the Island because the Mi'kmaq were over hunting them and not allowing the population to increase. But in 1721, La Ronde, a French recorder and observer (when the French began to focus more on colonization they recorded what resources could be found on PEI), wrote that the Mi'kmaq usually did not hunt caribou because they were not easy to kill.

The caribou survived the transition of PEI from French hands to the British. For a little while, at least. Holland (a British recorder), recorded in 1765 that there were "some, but very few carriboux". By 1775, there were no records of them. According to Sobey, we have a tendency to believe extirpated animals are around longer than they actually are. Extirpated animals are those that are no longer found in a certain area but are not extinct.

Therefore, Holland could have heard that the caribou had persisted in small numbers from the Acadians and wrote they were still on the Island. After all, just because you don't see one in a while doesn't mean they are not around.

After Hollands recording, some antlers would be found in the woods, but they showed signs of being old and weather-worn. These antlers were sometimes cited as evidence there were once moose on PEI. There is more evidence there were never moose on PEI - during the French settlement period, both Denys and La Ronde specifically mention the absence of moose and the "moose horns" found during British settlement could easily have been caribou antlers.

Moose. A cute moose.
(Image credit: Smurfsintothewild)

Caribou were always recorded as having low numbers on the Island, same with its main predator, the wolf. So the caribou would have easily been vulnerable to overhunting and loss of habitat to settlers - it would have needed more land than foxes and rabbits. It also couldn't hide as well.

Currently, Maritime caribou have been extirpated for a long time, they did not do well with people encroaching on their habitats. As a result, PEI lost their caribou around 1765, the Nova Scotia mainland around 1905, Cape Breton Island around 1912, and in New Brunswick, it is believed they moved north by 1927. Two attempts were made to reintroduce caribou to the Nova Scotian mainland in 1939 and on Cape Breton Island in the 1960's. Both failed. The remaining Maritime caribou are in Gaspesie National Park, Quebec.

Caribou is not the only animal to be extirpated from the Island. Wolves, lynx, black bears, martens, and walruses are also no longer found on PEI. Although, in (some) defence of the settlers, the walrus was mainly hunted by ships from New England, so any regulations or restrictions Governor Patterson put in place were useless. Something he was very aware of.

So the caribou disappeared from the Island due to overhunting and loss of habitat. An issue facing many industries today.

If you like what I do here, please follow and subscribe. Also, let me know if there are any topics you really want me to cover!

Sources

Gober, Allison. "Deer Differences." Interactive Media I. April 9, 2013. https://art341s13.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/deer-differences/

Metcalfe, Zack. "Huge wolves, caribou and bears once roamed PEI's old growth forests." The Guardian. September 30, 2017. http://www.theguardian.pe.ca/news/local/huge-wolves-caribou-and-bears-once-roamed-peis-old-growth-forests-105180/

Metcalfe, Zack. "Farewell to the Maritime caribou." Chronicle Herald. November 8, 2017.  http://thechronicleherald.ca/southshorebreaker/1518289-farewell-to-the-maritime-caribou

Sobeys, Douglas G. "An Analysis of the Historical Records for the Native Mammalian Fauna of Prince Edward Island." The Canadian Field-Naturalist 121 (4), 2007. pp. 384 - 396. Available at  http://canadianfieldnaturalist.ca/index.php/cfn/article/view/510/510