The two lodges were on habitat used by caribou for calving, rearing and rutting, and added to pressures the animals were facing from predators.

Parks Canada has proposed a $25-million project that would permanently pen up to 40 females and five males in a highly managed and monitored area of Jasper National Park.

Caribou herds in Canada's Rocky Mountains are now so precarious that Parks Canada is preparing a plan to round up females from nearly vanished herds and pen them in a captive breeding program to replenish others.