They came, they conversed and they even spotted some caribou in the flesh. The 200 delegates at last week’s North American Caribou Workshop had a busy few days of academic discussion and debate, but for some of the environmental groups in attendance, the conference will do little to improve the prospects for caribou survival.

“As of right now, the conference has had no positive impact,” said Brian Horejsi, an Alberta wildlife scientist and advocate for species at risk. “The discussions that the delegates are having are just nitpicking and hair splitting.”

Horejsi was particularly frustrated by the fact that mitigation of industrial and other human activities played such an important role in the discussions during the week.

“It’s a stall, not a solution,” he said of measures taken to restore impacted habitat or to attempt to minimize that impact in the first place. “It’s window dressing. What we need is drastic action, but unfortunately most people have bought into the idea that we can do this over time.”

Instead, Horejsi believes that more substantial steps are required. He said that a decade-long moratorium on industrial activity in known caribou habitat is needed to prevent the extinction of certain populations. Beyond the development blockade, Horejsi believes that declaring large tracts of land as “roadless” is also required. While the United States has declared more than 53 million acres as roadless, Canada is lagging far behind.

“If the Americans can do it with a population of 300 million, than we can definitely afford to give up some space,” Horejsi said.

The academics at the conference did nothing to throw their support behind bold steps like these, and Horejsi thinks he knows why.

“People are limited by their funding, much of which comes through industry,” he said. Indeed, the conference itself was sponsored by major players in the forestry and petroleum sectors such as Weyerhauser and Talisman Energy.

“The researchers have a moral responsibility to inform and educate the people, but instead they are becoming increasingly co-opted by industry. They are hamstringing the recovery effort.”

That’s an unfair assessment of the academic work being done, said Kirby Smith, the Alberta government biologist from Edson who served as the lead organizer for the conference.

As far as Smith is concerned, research that is funded by industry sources reveals the truth as it exists on the ground, but issues can arise when academics are tabbed as consultants by industry.

“In those cases, you find out a lot of things, but the companies only use the information that they want or need,” he said.

Smith acknowleged Horejsi’s point that the conference in its current format was unlikely to do a lot to improve the public’s understanding of the caribou situation.

“We do what we are trained for,” said Smith. “We study animals and report, but often you’re talking to the well-informed and it’s a larger societal decision and discussion that needs to happen.”

Horejsi went so far as to propose that the conference should have passed a resolution advocating an industrial moratorium, but Smith said that the event is not organized in a way that would make group positions possible.

Smith sits on the Northern Wild Sheep and Goat Council, and said that this body was able to make joint statements and hold votes on their position.

“This group doesn’t have those processes in place, so even if that is a good idea, we don’t have a context for it.”

Forming a continental or national caribou council has been discussed, but Smith said that for now, provincial bodies like the Alberta Caribou Committee will have to take the lead on scientific lobbying.

The real outcome from the week in Jasper was the presentation and discussion of more than 60 pieces of original research, he added.

“This is all about the science, and it went very well.”