Biologists and researchers from across North America and around the world will arrive in Jasper next week to discuss an animal whose plight is no doubt familiar to many locals. The caribou.

The four-day conference will see more than 150 delegates share their research findings at the Sawridge Inn and Conference Centre, and the scientists will also have the opportunity to get into the field, as Parks Canada leads a trip into the Maligne Valley to observe caribou habitat up close and personal.

The North American Caribou Conference is held every two years and this iteration, the eleventh overall, is the first to be held in Alberta.

Kirby Smith, an Edson-based area wildlife biologist for the Alberta government, is the prinicipal organizer for the conference, which begins on Sunday (April 23) and runs through until next Thursday (April 27).

“Even though the focus is on North America, there is still an international flavour,” Smith said. “We’ll have presentations from Greenland, Norway, Sweden...”

As with any scientific gathering, the heart of the event is the presentation of papers and posters. Sixty-six papers will be discussed over the course of the week; so many, in fact, that organizers had to schedule concurrent sessions in order to fit them all in. While the theme of the gathering is the study of recovering caribou populations (like the South Jasper herd) Smith said that there would be a wide range of topics presented by the researchers in attendance.

The entire event will be recorded and the 

proceedings passed on to participants. The conference is the only regular scientific gathering in the world where all discussion focuses on caribou. 

Many of the papers being presented in Jasper will be peer-reviewed and published after being included in the proceedings.

At least one of the papers on the agenda discusses the local caribou population specifically. Jesse Wittington, a Parks Canada wildlife biologist, formerly based in Jasper and now working in Banff, will present his research on the responses of wolves and caribou to trails in Jasper National Park. The paper studies whether or not caribou avoid recreational trails in order to reduce the risk of predation, said Parks Canada spokesperson Amber Pastoor.

Parks’ Mark Bradley will also play an active role in the conference, acting as the facilitator and lead tour guide for the field trip into the Maligne Valley. He will be joined by Don Thomas and Kent Brown, independent researchers who have done work in the area in the past. Brown is the scientist who is analysing the effects of lithium chloride on caribou populations that frequent road surfaces to lick salt. One of the test areas for his research is located on the Maligne Lake Road. Thomas, meanwhile, did vegetation research in the Maligne area during the early 1990s.

The field trip, which is scheduled to include a jaunt up the Jasper Tramway, will provide the conference attendees with the opportunity to take a break from a steady diet of research reports and scientific studies.

“It’s going from 8 (a.m.) until 5 (p.m.) so it’s a lot to process,” said Smith.

Another break from the routine will come early Monday morning (April 24) when a panel of experts conducts a review of the national recovery plan for woodland caribou. In addition to representatives from Environment Canada, questions and criticisms will be raised by the Sierra Club, a biology professor, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and the Canadian Forest Products Association. There are no plans for a similar review or discussion of the Jasper National Park recovery plan for the South Jasper caribou herd.

“It will be one of the highlights, I think,” Smith said of the review. Smith believes it is highly appropriate for the conference to be hosted in Alberta this year.

“There has been a lot of caribou work done here in the last 10 years,” he said. “A lot of that has to do with the growth of industry, and it’s really made Alberta the leading province in Canada in terms of caribou research.”

The conference has been recently held in Alaska and Ontario, and while Smith has never attended the workshop in the past, several of his colleagues from Alberta Fish and Wildlife have been regular attendees since the  conference was founded more than 20 years ago. 

“We spend a lot of time dealing with caribou,” Smith said of his field office in Edson. “We do have more than 273 species to look after but they tend to be one of the most important.”