Widzïh — the Telkwa caribou herd

The herd on the map

Recovery-area boundary, mine footprint, and habitat layers on the same basemap. The proposed Tenas Project footprint sits inside the 2,300 km² wildlife habitat area established by the province in 2016. Open full-screen →

Where the review stands

Caribou is one of the main unresolved questions in the environmental assessment of the Tenas Project. This is the record as of the company's caribou response of January 26, 2026 and the corrected copy it filed on March 23, 2026.

• The company's estimate went from 15.1 hectares to 3,212.3. Its 2022 Application counted 15.1 hectares of effect on caribou habitat. Federal reviewers wrote that the Application "omits or mischaracterizes information about the Telkwa caribou herd", and the Province warned the project could "further the decline" of the herd. Recalculated with the wider disturbance buffers the reviewers required, the company's January 2026 figure is 3,212.3 hectares. Source: Caribou Information Request, Oct 6, 2022, p. 4, p. 5. Source: Telkwa Mining caribou response, Jan 26, 2026, p. 2.
• The company still says its first number was the realistic one. It "believes that the 2022 EAC Application presented the most likely effect", and calls the larger figure "the most precautionary" assessment, done at the request of Indigenous Nations and regulators. Source: Jan 26, 2026 response, p. 4.
• It proposes to pay, not to avoid. The offer is $7,621,581 in offset payments to a fund for habitat restoration elsewhere in the range, at ratios of roughly 11 to 15 hectares restored for each hectare affected. The company calls this "a net benefit to the herd". Federal reviewers had written that an earlier version's figures "do not appear to be correct" and that its assumptions understated what would be required; the company revised the ratios in response. Source: Jan 26, 2026 response, p. 4, p. 24, p. 25, p. 26, p. 34.
• The Province does not accept the conclusion. Its biologists wrote on January 6, 2026 that the finding of a "minor net effect" is "unsupported", and that "exceedance of disturbance thresholds does not justify additional losses; rather, it underscores the need to avoid further disturbance in already over-threshold landscapes". Source: Jan 26, 2026 response, quoting the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship, p. 35, p. 37.
• Are caribou using the low ground? The two sides read the collars differently. The Province reports "consistent use of lower elevations" in 2020 to 2025 collar data, including below 1,100 metres, and told a June 2025 meeting there was evidence of a calf at lower elevation. The company answers that fewer than 5% of recent collar points are that low and none is inside the project area. The Province's position is that collars sit on a small share of the herd, almost all of them females, so "the presence/absence of telemetry data does not necessarily reflect the quality of the habitat nor the absence of caribou". Source: Jan 26, 2026 response, p. 27, p. 28, p. 29. Source: Caribou sub-committee notes, Jun 10, 2025, p. 3.
• The company says the herd will not reoccupy the area either way. It maintains that "significant re-occupation is unlikely during the duration of the proposed Project, even if the Tenas Project does not proceed", because logging and road-building are still permitted in the low-elevation range. The Province replies that this "shifts responsibility away from the proponent". Source: Jan 26, 2026 response, p. 23, p. 32, p. 37.
• The mine cannot be moved off caribou habitat. The company says 3.4 hectares of the project lie in high-elevation core range and that no layout fully avoids caribou habitat "because the location of the coal resource is fixed". It says underground mining was examined and ruled out. Source: Jan 26, 2026 response, p. 39.
• What happens next. The Environmental Assessment Office accepted the company's responses on August 17, 2026 as enough to begin its own assessment. Its findings on caribou will appear in the draft Assessment Report. See what's happening now for the dates, and the review timeline for how the caribou question developed. Source: EAO letter, Aug 17, 2026, p. 1.

What the March 23, 2026 filing changed. It is the same 265-page response, still dated January 26, 2026, re-filed with corrections. Reading the two copies side by side as page images, we found two changes of substance, both in the supporting effects table. The direct effect on low-elevation movement habitat is corrected from 755.4 to 812.4 hectares, which brings the table into line with the figures in the covering letter. The project's addition to federally defined "disturbed" habitat in the high-elevation core range is corrected from 3.4 to 71.2 hectares. The 3,212.3-hectare total and the $7,621,581 offset figure are unchanged. Source: March 23, 2026 filing, p. 114, p. 115, p. 4. Source: Jan 26, 2026 response, p. 114, p. 115.

How we compared them: the March copy has no text layer, so each of its pages was rendered as an image and set against the January page. Of 213 pages with the same layout, nine differed; seven of those were cosmetic (table rules, signing stickers removed). Another 52 pages, mostly maps and wide tables, were turned or shrunk on the page in the March copy; turned back and scaled to match, they showed no differences.

What's at stake

The widzïh — caribou — are a subpopulation of southern mountain caribou historically integral to Wet'suwet'en life for food, clothing, tools, and trade. Colonial resource extraction and infrastructure — highways, dams, rail lines, clearcuts, and farmland — progressively fragmented the range and pushed the herd into isolated alpine terrain. By the 1990s the count had dropped to single digits before provincial augmentation stabilised it.

A 2020 survey put the herd at 33 animals. British Columbia's recovery target for genetic viability is more than 100 within a decade; ecologists estimate the intact habitat could support around 300.

Since 2016 the province has managed a 2,300 km² wildlife habitat protection area and imposed access restrictions to reduce disturbance. Provincial biologists monitor the herd with satellite-collared females and camera traps, and restore terrain by remediating soil and placing debris to interrupt predator corridors along industrial roads. Recovery is Wet'suwet'en-led in partnership with B.C. Ministry of Environment biologists based in Smithers.

Local stewardship

Recovery on the ground is not only a provincial exercise. The Bulkley Valley Naturalists have coordinated a citizen-led Telkwa Mountains Caribou Recovery Project since the late 2000s — a voluntary recreational-access management plan built by community consensus with local snowmobilers, backcountry skiers, and hikers.

The 2013 winter survey the project cites recorded a minimum-known-alive count of just 12 animals. Community protocols observed in the recovery areas since then:

• No dogs in recovery areas.
• Do not follow caribou tracks.
• Do not approach caribou.
• Turn off motorised machines on caribou encounter.
• Leave the area immediately if caribou are present.

Source: Bulkley Valley Naturalists — Telkwa Mountains Caribou Recovery Project Update. Coordinated with the BC Ministry of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations (Smithers).

Overlap with the Tenas Project

The Tenas Project proposed by Telkwa Coal Limited would occupy roughly 1,000 hectares inside the 2,300 km² recovery area. Modelling of blasting and industrial noise indicates acoustic displacement affecting 19,000 hectares of available caribou habitat beyond the mine footprint itself. The project site would remove forests that are currently regenerating with the arboreal lichens caribou depend on in winter.

GIS analysis cited in the reporting shows caribou have not directly occupied the proposed mine site for years — they are concentrated some 10 kilometres away. Ecologists caution that absence-under-pressure is not the same as unused habitat: the site is winter low-elevation range historically used by the herd, in an area still recovering from earlier logging.

You won't find caribou going into where there's industrial activity — period, end of story. — Len Vanderstar, retired B.C. habitat protection biologist, to The Narwhal

In December 2022, B.C. rejected the Sukunka coal project on the grounds it threatened the already-precarious Quintette caribou herd — the first B.C. environmental-assessment denial explicitly grounded in caribou protection.

The proponent's position

Telkwa Mining Limited's own public-facing caribou information sheet frames the picture very differently. The company emphasises spatial separation and predation, not habitat loss:

• Baseline studies: “Caribou were not detected within the Project Area during the two years of baseline studies nor the three exploration programs.”
• Current range: The herd's range is “currently centred on the Telkwa and Howson mountain ranges,” using alpine habitat year-round “more than expected based on habitat availability.” Based on movement analysis, the caribou are “unlikely to use the Project Area.”
• Primary threat: “Telkwa Caribou mortality from predation is the main factor limiting herd growth.”
• Impact assessment: “The Project does not compromise the recovery goal of reducing habitat disturbance to <35%.” Overlap with current caribou use is minimal, so the Project “will not act as a barrier to Caribou movement.” Direct mortality from vehicle or train collisions is unlikely because the Project Area “does not overlap current habitat use by caribou.”
• Mitigation measures: vegetation clearing limited to planned footprints; delineation of sensitive habitat inside the project boundary; a Wildlife Education Program for employees and contractors; if caribou are observed within the Project Area, notification of the BC Regional Wildlife Biologist for the Skeena Region; traffic and access controls.
• Residual effects: The Project is “expected to minimally add to existing levels of habitat disturbance and is not predicted to increase the herd's risk of being unable to sustain a regional subpopulation.”

A collar-location density map on the same sheet (1994–2023, all seasons) shows highest density on the Telkwa and Howson ranges to the west of the town of Telkwa, with negligible density at the proposed Tenas project site to the south. Compare this against the Narwhal reporting above, which notes caribou may avoid substandard habitat under industrial pressure and cites a 19,000 ha acoustic-displacement modelling result.

Source: Telkwa Mining Limited — Caribou public information sheet (Tenas Project). Bracketed passages are direct quotations from that document.

By the numbers

Voices in the record

On my territory, I used to come out here and get my moose every year, sometimes two in one day because there was a lot of them in those days. Now there's nothing. — Chief Gisday'wa (Fred Tom), hereditary chief, Wet'suwet'en Nation

Environmental assessment is not planning for recovery. — Rosemary-Claire Collard, geographer, Simon Fraser University

They use degraded environments regularly as justification for more development. — Jessica Dempsey, geographer, University of British Columbia