[thumper]

There are caribou who live year round within the boundaries of Jasper National Park. Nothing has changed there - no new roads, no new development or industry, no logging. Only new seasonal recreational access restrictions to portions of their winter/spring range, mainly designed to limit wolf access along trails and roads. Yet their numbers steadily decline.

The Banff National Park population recently ceased to exist - the last small herd wiped out in an avalanche.

I believe that you could shut down all the industry in Alberta's caribou habitat, close the towns, kick every last person out - and still the caribou would disappear. It might take a little longer, but they're a relic ice-age animal whose range ebbs and flows with climate, and the complicated web of factors involving predator & prey relationships.