Parks Canada is considering a captive caribou breeding program, though experts warn the plan is risky

EDMONTON – Parks Canada is preparing a plan to round up female caribou from nearly vanished herds and pen them in a captive breeding program to replenish others.

The move is being made as a last-ditch effort to prevent the animals from disappearing from the landscape entirely, as some herds have already done.

A draft of the plan obtained by The Canadian Press says up to 40 female caribou would be penned in a facility in Jasper National Park in western Alberta.

They could produce up to 20 calves a year, enough to repopulate Jasper’s caribou herds in about 10 years.