“Walk the Land, Before You Talk About the Land”: TEK‐Based Conservation Monitoring Invalidates Caribou Extirpation Status Assigned by British Columbia and Canada

Abstract

The loss of species represents critical ecological events with far‐reaching implications for conservation biology. Accurate determinations of population status are therefore essential. Erroneous declarations of extinction or extirpation can lead to legal and policy inertia, the premature termination of recovery efforts, and the ongoing degradation of critical habitat. These outcomes ultimately heighten the risk to any remaining individuals and undermine Indigenous peoples’ cultural ways of life within which species are embedded. This study challenges the status designation of a caribou population with empirical evidence derived from a traditional ecological knowledge‐based conservation monitoring program initiated by West Moberly First Nations in the western subarctic of Canada. Relational, field‐based methods confirmed the presence of caribou where the governments of British Columbia and Canada had declared the species extirpated. These results necessitate an urgent reassessment not only of the status of the specific caribou subpopulation but also of broader conservation strategies, land use policies, and environmental monitoring. More fundamentally, the study underscores the imperative to center Indigenous knowledges in conservation biology and to critically examine the epistemic foundations that underpin species status determinations and recovery planning.