CAR-10011_spring_2007_FNL
3/19/07
11:30 AM
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Published by the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee
www.carc.org
Volume 31, Number 1, Spring 2007
What Price the Caribou?
By Clive Tesar
The caribou is perhaps the iconic Canadian animal. While
beavers are credited with helping to build the country, it
is difficult to get too attached to an aquatic rodent. Polar
bears are also a candidate for archetypal Canadian
animal, but they are scattered on the fringe of the country; besides, it is not easy to harbour warm emotions for
a creature that would happily add you to its menu, given
half a chance.
The Cape Bathurst herd, which ranges around the
Mackenzie River delta, has gone from an estimated 17,500
animals in 1992 to 2,400 in 2005. The Porcupine herd,
which ranges between the Arctic coast of Yukon and
Alaska, is down to about 110,000 animals according
to recent official estimates, from a high of about 178,000
in 1989.
What is driving the decreases is not clear, and the reasons
may be different for different herds and populations. The
The caribou has much to recommend it as a national
traditional knowledge of local indigenous peoples, which
symbol. Although it is mostly found in the vast herds of
goes back much further than scientific monibarren-ground caribou that roam the territories
toring, suggests that there are natural cycles
and northern parts of some provinces, there are
in the growth and decline of herds, probably
also small populations of woodland caribou
connected to changes in climate. While those
scattered across the country. It has a regal
climate changes may have been cyclical, the
bearing and imposing appearance, but is a
current climate change being experienced in
peaceful vegetarian. As already noted, it is priThe
caribou
has
been
featured
on
the Arctic is unprecedented in its speed, and
marily an animal of the north, and Canadians,
the Canadian 25-cent piece since
although concentrated heavily in the southern 1937. The design was created by may not have the same effects as previous
sun-belt of the country, like to think of Canadian artist Emmanuel Hahn. changes. On top of the climate change factors,
the caribou ranges are becoming more
themselves as northern. There is, however, one
heavily
used
by industry. There are also more hunters
problem with identifying too strongly with the caribou
than ever before, with more access to caribou, and more
as a national symbol: its numbers appear to be dwindling.
efficient hunting methods.
Alarming figures have been reported on some of the
Some governments are paying attention to the shrinking
northern herds and populations. The Peary caribou that
herds. The Government of the Northwest Territories has
inhabit the northernmost part of the caribou range in
instituted a barren-ground caribou management strategy
Canada, on the islands of the High Arctic, are officially
for the years 2006–2010. As part of this strategy, it has
designated as “Threatened” by the Committee on the Status
put in place lower limits on the numbers of caribou that
of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. Several years ago,
can be taken by non-native and non-resident hunters. At
government officials even put together a plan to establish
the same time, it has increased the numbers of wolves that
a breeding herd in Calgary, in case the animals were to
can be hunted, and has also started delaying the publidie out in the wild.
cation of the movements of caribou herds. These had preThe barren-ground caribou herds are also on the decline.
viously been available immediately on the Internet, by
Some herds have undergone a shocking decrease.
tracking the movements of animals fitted with radio collars.
While the economic values can be calculated, the other
values represented by caribou hunting are incalculable.
The caribou is central to many of the northern cultures.
In hunting the caribou, northern peoples repeat rhythms
established over thousands of years, following tracks
and trails trodden by distant ancestors. Following these
trails, taking part in the same activities, is an essential part
of their identity. To take away that ability to partake in
the caribou hunt is simply unthinkable. When it seemed
that the federal government would restrict the hunting
of Peary caribou, Nunatsiaq News reported this reaction
from Marty Kuluguqtuq, secretary-treasurer for the
Hunters and Trappers Organization in Grise Fiord. “We feel
it’s our right to continue to harvest them. We’ve got no
alternative for our livelihood, our food and our well-being.”
“For many Aboriginal residents, harvesting of caribou is a way of life that links directly to Aboriginal
livelihoods, culture and well-being. In small communities and for low income families, harvesting
caribou and other wild foods is essential for meeting basic nutritional needs where store-bought
foodstuffs are prohibitively expensive and cash
is scarce. The loss of caribou harvesting opportunities through reduced access to caribou or
through the implementation of management
In this publication, we do not survey all of the different
northern herds and populations; to do so would require
a rather thick book. Rather, we have chosen particular
herds and populations for the particular interests that they
represent. The Bathurst herd is probably relied on by the
largest number of people in the north, and is increasingly
pressured by mining development, as it shares a range
with territory rich in minerals, including gold, diamonds,
and base metals. The Porcupine herd raises more jurisdictional issues than the average herd as it ranges not just
between territories, but between countries. The herds
clustered around the Mackenzie delta (Bluenose East,
Bluenose West, Cape Bathurst) are treated as one for
the purposes of this examination. They appear to be undergoing the steepest decline of any of the northern herds,
and are also in an area that may well soon undergo an
explosion of gas exploration and development, assuming
the Mackenzie Gas Project proceeds. The population of
actions will cause hardship to these people.”
Caribou Forever — Our Heritage, Our Responsibility.
A Barren-ground Caribou Management Strategy for the
Northwest Territories. Government of the Northwest Territories,
2006, p. 18.
There are few promising signs for the caribou. However,
there is one northern herd that appears to be bucking the
trend. The Fortymile herd in Yukon and Alaska, once
estimated at over half a million animals, was reduced to an
estimated 5,000 at its lowest point. Since then, it has been
rebounding, and although there are no recent survey figures,
it is now thought to number about 40,000. The rebound
was not achieved just by letting nature take its course. The
numbers in the herd only started improving after hunting
was restricted and predation by wolves was limited.
This approach worked for one herd, but what measures
will be necessary to help the other declining herds and
populations, and what price will have to be paid for those
measures? For each place in the north where the caribou
are still hunted for subsistence — whether it is Old Crow
in Yukon, or Wekweti in the Northwest Territories, or
Resolute Bay in Nunavut — there is concern over the
dwindling caribou numbers, but also concern about limitations on hunting. The value of caribou consumed for
subsistence has not been precisely calculated for each of
the northern territories, but is probably in the realm of
tens of millions of dollars per year. That is what it
would cost for people to replace the caribou meat in their
diets with expensive meat shipped up from southern
Canada, and to replace the other economic benefits
generated by the caribou hunts.
Herd or population?
Some groups of caribou are called herds, while
others are referred to as populations. The
difference is that some groups migrate to areas
where the caribou give birth. These calving
areas give the name to the herd. So, for
instance, the Bathurst herd calves in the area
of Bathurst Inlet. The animals in the herd show
some slight genetic differences from other
herds. The caribou that do not appear to
migrate for calving are simply referred to
as populations, such as the Victoria Island
population.
2
Peary caribou on the Arctic Islands is perhaps in the most
precarious position of all the caribou. The numbers appear
to have shrunk drastically over the years, and they cannot
be replenished by other herds as they are a separate and
distinct species. Finally, the Fortymile herd will be examined as an apparent success story in bringing a herd
back from the brink — something that may be necessary
with other northern herds if current trends continue.
“When wildlife population trends suggest there
is a serious concern ENR applies the ‘Precautionary
Principle.’ This means that management decisions
err on the side of caution. We know that caribou
numbers are declining and we must take reasonable
As an organization, CARC is taking the same position
that it has taken to date on all issues of northern development. There are important sustainable development
principles to consider when assessing what actions, if any,
should be taken to protect each specific caribou herd and
population. We firmly believe that local people should
have access to the best possible information to help them
decide on what actions to take, and that their voices should
carry weight in the debate. It is evident that all the sides
here — those who wish to conserve the herds, those
who wish to protect indigenous hunting rights, and those
who wish to bring further development to the caribou
conservation measures now to prevent serious
or irreparable damage to this resource.”
Michael Miltenberger, NWT Minister of Environment and
Natural Resources, ENR news release, February 20, 2006.
ranges — all have a valid point. It is our hope that by
further exploring the facts and examining the values
that underlay some of the issues facing northerners, we
can help people to find an appropriate balance between
the competing interests. ឣ
The Position of Caribou in the
North – An Overview
By Anne Gunn
in the western Arctic. What do those changes mean to
the future of caribou and what can or should we be
collectively doing?
Anne is fortunate to have some 30 years’ experience with
Peary caribou, barren-ground caribou, and mountain and
boreal caribou. She happily thanks all those who shared
the experiences on the caribou ranges and their knowledge
with her.
Climate change is nothing new to caribou. In the
1.6 million years since caribou reached North America,
they have been through four cycles of warming and
cooling temperatures as continental glaciers advanced and
retreated. Giant lakes formed and emptied and the taiga
and tundra have expanded and contracted. As the
habitats changed, the caribou dispersed and adapted.
Those adaptations led to the diversity of caribou now
found across North America.
Caribou and people have woven their complex threads
through North American history for millennia. Is that
far-reaching relationship about to change? As we extend
our roads, communities, mines, and pipelines more and
more in the caribou ranges, are we collectively nibbling
away the space where caribou have long adapted to the
shifts in weather, climate, and predators? Do we have
enough respect for caribou that we will not allow them
to slip between our fingers?
Within those glacial cycles, barren-ground caribou have
their own cycles. Over periods of about 30–60 years,
caribou herds go from high to low numbers. We know
about those cycles from aboriginal elders and archaeological sites. The caribou themselves leave traces of
those cycles. As the caribou’s summer migration takes
them back across the treeline, they follow well-worn trails.
One thing is certain — we cannot afford to dither too
long given the rate of changes we are unleashing across
the Arctic regions. In addition to our increasing presence
on the ranges of the caribou, the signals of global warming are already measurable with pronounced warming
3
Photo: Clive Tesar
Many northerners still use caribou hides for clothing. Items such as these traditionally tanned and beaded moccasins reinforce cultural skills and bring
cash into indigenous communities.
The caribou hooves leave small scars on the exposed roots
of black spruce, and we can count the roots’ growth rings
to arrive at the year when the scar was made. More scars
mean more caribou. The spruce trees can live for a couple of hundred years, which gives us a record of the cyclic
shifts in caribou abundance.
this shows up as reduced pregnancy rates and calf survival. Meanwhile, the increasing caribou abundance
will have fed increasing numbers of predators, including
wolves and grizzly bears. Their combined effects mean
that soon caribou adult and calf survival declines further and caribou abundance is headed downward. The
cycle is self-limiting as the reduced numbers of caribou
support fewer predators. The vegetation then recovers and
the caribou are on their way back up.
What drives the cycles in barren-ground caribou abundance? The answers lie in a complex dance between the
caribou having enough to eat and being able to avoid
being eaten themselves. And that dance is set to the rhythm
of climate. Weather interacts with just about every aspect
of caribou ecology, and the weather has its own patterns
over decades. There are runs of cold, dry winters and then
runs of warmer but moister (more snow) winters. Then
there are runs of summers that are hot and sunny with
lightning strikes, which bring more forest fires that
burn off the lichens the caribou rely on in winter.
On Canada’s High Arctic islands, Peary caribou are closer
to the limits — life is simpler (less diversity of plants, for
example) and the effects of weather more severe. The
weather patterns vary across the islands, with the large
northwest islands of Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg tending
to have a more stable, drier, colder climate. The central,
southwest, and southeast islands sometimes get warmer,
moister air that brings storms (see map on page 11). The
resulting severe weather sharply reduces Peary caribou
abundance. Those effects are complicated by other
factors, including predation and hunting.
We think the decades of good and poor weather affect
caribou forage, and those effects accumulate. Caribou
start to have to spend more energy to find food in winter, while their higher numbers may have lessened the ease
of finding forage during the summer. Their resilience
(ability to cope with environmental changes) declines and
This is a simplified version of a complex story about caribou cycles and factors influencing caribou abundance,
but it gives us insight into the importance of climate in
4
every aspect of caribou ecology. When we go back in time,
caribou seem to have adapted to earlier swings in climate
by moving their range as glaciers advanced and retreated.
It is a sobering thought, however, that during the last
sharp warming trend some 10,000 years ago, many large
mammals disappeared. Yukon horses, wooly mammoths,
Alaskan camels, short-faced bears, and American lions all
failed to survive. Those Pleistocene extinctions may be a
warning to us — it seems it was the human presence combined with a rapidly warming climate that was the undoing of so many large mammals.
sometimes opposing interests. We are aboriginal elders,
and we are young people desperate for jobs. We are
people who cherish Canada’s north. We are professionals
and we are amateurs. We are as diverse as the caribou
and their ecosystems. People, when faced with complex
problems such as conservation issues, have a tendency to
look for consensus when they should not and to look for
differences when they should not.
“Caribou and people have woven their
The signals of global warming are measurable in the western Arctic. One example we have seen on the range of the
Bathurst herd is an increase in July temperatures since the
early 1980s. The warmer temperatures mean an increase
in the severity of warble fly harassment of caribou. Warble
flies, which look like bees, terrify the caribou, and for
good reason; the flies lay their eggs on the caribou’s legs
and the tiny grubs migrate through the body to spend the
winter growing under the skin on the back. The caribou’s
terror of these flies means they spend less time feeding
and more time huddled together or running in panic.
Less time feeding reduces their condition to the point
where calf survival becomes less likely and the cows do
not conceive. Extremely hot temperatures also can stress
caribou, so, all in all, hotter summers reduce the resilience
of the caribou.
complex threads through North American
history for millennia.... Do we have enough
respect for caribou that we will not allow
them to slip between our fingers?”
Not only are the people who are part of caribou conservation a diverse group, they come from a diverse
landscape. The Arctic landscape is vast and ecologically
variable from east to west and north to south. Added to
that, people represent and are represented by an array of
government agencies and public bodies, co-management
boards, regional and community land-claim organizations, mining and oil and gas industries, and nongovernment organizations. All bring their perceptions of
the issues facing caribou and their own agendas. We
collectively have different priorities and differing views
of conservation and our roles in it.
At the same time as we are measuring the signals of global
warming, we collectively, through our activities, have a
greater presence on caribou ranges. The caribou’s response
is avoidance. We now see subtle and gradual avoidance
around mines. Because these changes are so subtle,
some people have difficulty believing that caribou are
under pressure. If the caribou are already struggling to
deal with their changing climate, however, these seemingly insignificant disturbances may be adding up.
Given our diversity as people and organizations and the
complexity of the problems facing caribou, what can or
should we be doing? An over-arching answer is respect,
starting with respect for each other’s views. Caribou ecology is complex — causes of declines interact, and simply
blaming one factor or another is unproductive. Complexity
is added as declines and recovery are not mirror images
of each other. In other words, recovery is not simply
‘fixing’ the causes of a decline, especially as some of those
causes may not be within our reach to fix.
On the central barrens, a third thread interweaving
with global warming and a greater human presence on
the caribou ranges is that now we are in a phase of low
numbers in at least the Bathurst, Cape Bathurst, East
Bluenose, and West Bluenose herds as well as the Porcupine
herd to the west. Based on past cycles, those herds should
recover — or will they? Do global warming and our
increasing presence on the caribou ranges mean that the
past is no longer a secure guide to the future and that all
the changes may combine to be simply too much for
caribou? Where does this leave us?
Respect includes being knowledgeable about caribou
and about the views of people who depend on caribou
and people who are concerned about them. This issue
of Northern Perspectives will start the conversation we
need to collectively have with each other as we take the
steps to ensure that caribou remain an integral part of
the northern landscape. ឣ
Before going further, it is prudent to think about “us.”
We are a diverse group of people with varied and
5
Stuck in the Middle: The Government
of the Northwest Territories
The question of what to do about the declining herds of
the Northwest Territories is highly charged politically. It
includes questions of aboriginal rights and treaty rights.
It crosses jurisdictional boundaries, between landclaims organizations and between territories. It crosses
boundaries of world views, between people who cling to
the traditional ways and the traditional economy and
people who see industrial development of the caribou
ranges as both inevitable and desirable. Stuck in the middle of all this is the Government of the Northwest
Territories. While the wildlife co-management boards set
up under land claims recommend management actions
for wildlife, it is the territorial government that has the
authority to make regulations.
What do you see as the situation for caribou across the
territories?
The information we have, all of the caribou are in
decline, most of them quite significantly. You go across
the north with the Cape Bathurst, the Bluenose east
and west, the Bathurst, and the Porcupine as well,
and even though they haven’t been surveyed recently,
there are indications that the Ahiak as well, and the
Beverly and Qamanirjuaq are going to be in the same
situation, so we have a circumstance where there’s a
trend in all the herds, and it’s of great concern. The
issue is, of course, is this just a cyclical occurrence
that some folks have indicated has happened over the
years, or is it a situation where the decline may be deepened by the climate change issues, the resource development pressure, the harvesting, and all these other
contributing factors overlaid onto what in the past may
have been a more natural kind of trend.
Michael Miltenberger is a member of the Northwest
Territories legislature and was recently the Minister of
Environment and Natural Resources, the government
department charged with regulating the caribou. He spoke
with Northern Perspectives editor Clive Tesar.
Photo: Courtesy of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, GNWT.
Caribou bunching up in summer to try to avoid insects.
6
Photo: Peary caribou photographed by SD MacDonald. Reproduced with permission of Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa, Canada.
What do you think is the situation, what are the things
driving the current declines?
“I’ve seen some documents that indicate
I think from what I’ve seen, read, and what I know about
climate change in the north, that this is going to be exacerbated if nothing else by those factors; by the resource
development, the harvesting, the climate change, things
like the melting permafrost, the insect infestation, things
like freezing events in the middle of winter that makes
the ground so hard the animals can’t feed, formerly very
solid barren ground turning into muskeg and swamp
where the animals can’t travel. All those are directly
correlated to climate change so I think it’s a very serious
problem. I’ve seen some documents that indicate scientists don’t even think the herds will survive. We have a
really big job on our hands to do the right things.
scientists don’t even think the herds will
survive. We have a really big job on our hands
to do the right things.”
going to cut the harvest off completely. We’re going to
clearly look at some things like taking the information
[on caribou movements] off the Internet, so they’re not
that easy to get to. We’re making plans to do harvest
surveys, and try to do a better job monitoring. We’re going
to have to work with people on regulation and monitoring of the whole harvest, which will be a very big step.
Outside our boundaries, we want to work with Yukon
and get our surveys done, and then the other big issue is
to start the process for the calving grounds, talk to
Nunavut, initiate those discussions, and then, of course,
there’s getting the federal government to be a more
visible and supportive member of this process. ឣ
The government has already taken some management actions,
what else are you considering?
Closest to home we’re going to continue to work with the
co-management boards on recommendations on how they
want the harvest in their area. Some of them are very stringent, as you know; up in Tuktoyaktuk, for instance, they’re
7
Top Twenty Policy Steps for Dealing
with Dwindling Caribou
In January 2007, the Government of the Northwest
Territories brought together about 170 delegates in Inuvik,
near the Arctic coast of the Northwest Territories, for a
‘Caribou Summit’, the first gathering of its kind. Most
of the delegates were indigenous, representing aboriginal
governments, hunters and trappers organizations, or
communities. They were joined by caribou biologists,
and some representatives of other sections of society, such
as outfitters and resident non-indigenous hunters, and
non-government organizations, including CARC.
For two and a half days, delegates discussed, listened,
and put together strategies that they hope will assist the
recovery of the caribou herds, and also limit human hardships. These strategies have now gone to the Government
of the Northwest Territories, so that it, together with
other northern governments and the federal government,
can find ways to put them into action.
Photo: Clive Tesar
The organization of the Caribou Summit was an indication of the alarm of the Government of the Northwest Territories.
8
Altogether, 58 different strategies were identified under
four different headings. Delegates then went through a
process to pick out their priorities. Below are the top 20
(some have been slightly reworded to help them make
sense to people who were not there):
Managing Human Impacts
1. Protect calving grounds in the NWT and Nunavut
[some of the NWT caribou herds calve in the adjacent
territory of Nunavut].
2. Reduce all harvest levels.
3. Start mandatory reporting of all harvest [in the past,
the indigenous harvest particularly has been poorly
reported].
4. Cut all [non-indigenous] resident, outfitting [commercial sport hunting], and commercial [meat sale]
harvest.
5. Teach people about their hunting rights and responsibilities under land-claim agreements and the Canadian
constitution.
Photo: Clive Tesar
Choosing priorities at the Caribou Summit.
Addressing Hardships
1. Develop local and regional codes of conduct for
caribou harvesting [drawing on traditional hunting
practices].
3. Determine impact of insects, climate change, and
human activity in determining caribou behaviour.
4. Create a central database containing information on
all NWT caribou herds.
2. Hold regional harvester workshops [to give people the
latest information about the caribou, and about new
codes or regulations].
5. Determine the impact of predators on present caribou
numbers.
3. Use DeneKede [an NWT indigenous school curriculum] to teach about traditional laws.
Engaging Partners
4. Use outfitters’ camps as a base to teach youth about
hunting.
1. Bring youth into hunters and trappers committee meetings, wildlife management board meetings, and wildlife
conferences.
5. Educate people about other traditional foods that may
have fallen out of use and may replace caribou to some
extent in their diet.
2. Develop a management plan for each caribou herd
that includes management actions for different herd
population levels.
Information for Management
3. Ask elders to help teach youth and people from
outside the NWT about how to hunt caribou and how
to handle meat to ensure there is no wastage.
1. Bring traditional [indigenous] knowledge into
decision making.
2. Do all caribou population surveys at one time [so that
there is a clear picture across the territories of population trends and levels].
4. Don’t make decisions without partners.
5. Hold aboriginal [indigenous] conference on caribou. ឣ
9
Peary Caribou – Now you see them,
now you don’t!
By Frank L. Miller, Research Scientist Emeritus
Canadian Wildlife Service
Prairie & Northern Region, Environment Canada
“The Peary caribou, including the other Arctic
Island caribou, was recognized as a ‘Threatened’
The Canadian Arctic Archipelago is a large group of
islands off the north coast of the Canadian mainland.
It is a vast, remote, and isolated region with a collective
land mass of almost one and a half million square
kilometres. There are 36,563 islands in the archipelago
but only 94 are 131 km2 (50 square miles) or more in
size. However, fifteen of those islands exceed 10,000 km2
in size, including three of the world’s ten largest islands,
the fifth largest, Baffin at 507,451 km2; the ninth, Victoria
at 217,291 km2; and the tenth, Ellesmere at 196,236
km2. Caribou and muskoxen are the only two large land
animals to have established themselves in the rigorous
tundra environment.
form of wildlife in Canada in 1979 by COSEWIC
[Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife
in Canada], then as ‘Endangered’ on the Queen
Elizabeth Islands and Banks Island in 1991,
and the overall numbers there have continued
downward since that time.”
turn of the 21st century. Of particular note, the Peary
caribou on the Queen Elizabeth Islands declined from
about 26,000 and now contribute just about 40% (3,000)
to those 7,800 caribou. This 45-year continual downward trend should more than qualify the Peary caribou
and all other Arctic Island caribou as currently being
“Endangered,” especially as many populations are still
hunted and there is no indication of any substantial
environmental improvements in the near future. In fact,
if climate change continues as predicted for the Canadian
Arctic, it seems most probable that the overall number
of Peary caribou and the other Arctic Island caribou will
continue downward for the foreseeable future. The entire
loss of caribou on some islands is not beyond the realm
of possibility.
Peary caribou – are they really endangered?
The Peary caribou on the Queen Elizabeth Islands and
the other Arctic Island caribou on the southern tier of the
Arctic Islands are unique to Arctic Canada; they are socially
important and an economically valuable part of Canada’s
natural heritage. Caribou hunting was and still is a focal
point of Inuit culture, even though there is no longer a
continual threat of starvation. Caribou hunters that can
share caribou meat with other people in the community
beyond their immediate family members are recognized
as the “best hunters” and given special social status, which
can even extend to the hunters’ immediate families. The
importance of the best caribou hunters and the economics
of caribou hunting become obvious when the high
price of imported meat in northern settlement stores is
considered, as each caribou carcass represents $500 to
$1,000 worth of much better tasting fresh red meat. The
Inuit are meat eaters, and today families without any wage
earners would eat a lot less fresh red meat if they could
not hunt caribou.
The Peary caribou, including the other Arctic Island
caribou, was recognized as a “Threatened” form of wildlife
in Canada in 1979 by COSEWIC, then as “Endangered”
on the Queen Elizabeth Islands and Banks Island in 1991,
and the overall numbers there have continued downward
since that time. Although the caribou on other islands
remained listed as “Threatened,” they have since fallen
to only a small fraction of their 1979 level and even in
some cases much lower than their 1991 level. In spite of
the seriousness of their decline, their status is now in limbo
because of Nunavut’s challenge to the federal government
over whether Nunavut was given adequate consultation
The overall number of all caribou classified as ‘Peary
caribou’ by the Committee on the Status of Endangered
Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) has declined 84% from
about 49,000 in the 1960s to only about 7,800 at the
10
Figure 1. Eight geographic caribou populations are recommended as management and conservation units for Peary and other Arctic Island caribou in the
Canadian Arctic Archipelago based on current knowledge.
Peary caribou: (1) Ellesmere–Axel Heiberg, (2) Ellef Ringnus–Amund Ringnus, (3) Mackenzie King–Borden, (4) Melville–Prince Patrick, (5) Bathurst–Cornwallis.
Arctic Island caribou: (6) Prince of Wales–Somerset, (7) Southwest and Eastern Victoria, Dolphin and Union herd, (8) Banks–Northwest Victoria.
on the listing of Peary caribou and the other Arctic Island
caribou under the conditions of the Canadian Species at
Risk Act.
recent DNA testing has confirmed that the current
classification of subspecies is at odds with some of the
DNA findings and that there is more genetic variety below
the level of those three subspecies. The genetic makeup
of the caribou within each of the eight geographic
populations identified in figure 1 represents a different
and unique contribution to Canadian caribou. This
creates a problem if conservation efforts are focused only
on the three subspecies already identified.
All North American caribou and the reindeer in other
parts of the Arctic belong to a single species (Rangifer
tarandus), which means that any conservation efforts must
be carried out below the species level. When the caribou
and reindeer genus Rangifer was revised in 1961, three
subspecies of North American caribou were recognized
that some people now accept as the basis for separating
caribou for the purpose of their conservation. However,
When biologists were trying to decide how to classify
caribou on the Canadian Arctic Islands, they recognized
11
fact, it could cause the loss of some types of caribou that
are distinctly genetically different from their island neighbours and, thus, would represent a failure in the Canadian
national conservation goal of maintaining biodiversity at
its current level. There is a dangerous misconception that
moving caribou from one population to another on the
archipelago, and even worse from the mainland to the
archipelago, would be a valid management option — it
would not be! Captured caribou moved by people between
or among geographic populations would change the existing genetic differences between the caribou. This would
effectively destroy thousands of years of evolution of
separate evolutionary lines of caribou on the Canadian
Arctic Archipelago.
Peary encounters the
caribou
Robert Peary was an American naval officer
who led several polar expeditions. In this excerpt
from his book Nearest the Pole, he describes how
Inuit hunters brought him the first specimens
of the animal later named after Peary.
“After dinner [September 11, 1905], three Eskimos
came in with the meat of four musk-oxen killed in
From a biological or ecological standpoint, this umbrella
classification of all Peary caribou on the Queen Elizabeth
Islands and all Peary-like caribou on the southern tier of
Arctic Islands is wrong. It masks most of the genetic
variation and differences in the way that the animals look,
act, and interact with their environments. For all of the
above reasons, I believe that for the purpose of their
conservation, we should refer only to the caribou on the
Queen Elizabeth Islands as Peary caribou and to the
caribou on the southern tier of the Arctic Islands as Arctic
Island caribou, until they can be otherwise named. Doing
so would better identify the different and unique
contributions that each of these geographic populations
makes to the biodiversity of caribou in Canada. It would
also establish the best level for the biologically and
ecologically sound management and conservation of
these caribou.
Rowan Bay, and in the evening the Porter Bay
party returned with the meat and skins of seven
reindeer killed in a valley on Fielden Peninsula
[north-east Ellesmere Island]. These, the first
specimens of this magnificent snow-white animal,
were from a herd of eleven surprised in a valley
close to Cape Joseph Henry, and among the seven
was the wide-antlered buck leader. These beautiful animals, in their winter dress almost as white
as the snow which they traverse, were found later
scattered over the entire region from Cape Hecla to
Lake Hazen, and westward along the north Grant
Land coast, over fifty specimens in all being
secured.”
The impact on communities
Source:
While recognizing the precarious and now endangered
existence of Peary caribou and all other Arctic Island
caribou, the cultural and economic needs of local Inuit
must also be accepted. Although the Inuit no longer have
to worry about serious food deprivation, there is still a
strong cultural desire to hunt and eat caribou. Self-restraint
is the only practical approach to controlling the harvest
of Peary caribou and all other Arctic Island caribou during
population lows, and it is only through a temporary
hunting ban or major reduction in the annual harvest
to a token harvest that these remnant caribou populations
can recover. It must be kept in mind, however, that recovery of such a depressed caribou population will take two
or three decades or more, and then only if overall
favourable environmental conditions prevail.
http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/dspace/bitstream/2246/1958/
1/B024a22.pdf
that considerable variation existed well below the
subspecies level. The purest line of Peary caribou on the
Queen Elizabeth Islands could be separated readily
from those caribou on islands to the south. To lump all
of these caribou together at the subspecies level for the
purpose of their conservation is a serious mistake that
could lead to irreversible changes in some or all cases.
At the very least, it would prevent an adequate evaluation
of the biodiversity of caribou on the Arctic Islands. In
12
Photo: Peary caribou photographed by SD MacDonald. Reproduced with permission of Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa, Canada.
The future of the Peary caribou has become as much a political question as a conservation question.
It appears that the best and quickest solution to the loss
of a harvestable caribou population is the promotion of
muskoxen as an alternative source of meat. The chances
for the recovery of a caribou population are much higher
with no hunting of those caribou. Muskox populations
are currently available to meet the requirements of every
settlement dependent on Peary caribou and all other Arctic
Island caribou throughout the archipelago. The switch to
muskoxen would promote the conservation of a caribou
population without causing any lasting harm to the harvested muskox population, which could be harvested
within sustainable limits. This approach will only work
if local Inuit accept the need for them to temporarily shift
their hunting efforts to muskoxen instead of caribou.
Switching to muskoxen is not a permanent solution, however, because of the Inuit’s strong cultural interest in caribou hunting and because the eating of caribou meat is as
much a means of socialization as a desired dietary staple
in their subsistence lifestyle.
What are the management/rescue options?
There are three major categories for factors that can cause
an animal to become endangered: (1) naturally occurring
extremely unfavourable conditions, (2) human-induced
extremely unfavourable conditions, and (3) a combination
13
of natural and human-caused extremely unfavourable
conditions. All three categories have been documented
for various geographic populations of Peary caribou and
all other Arctic Island caribou on the Canadian Arctic
Archipelago.
point to remember is that over the past 50 years only
two of the factors have ever been documented. Food has
been relatively unavailable due to extremely unfavourable
snow and ice conditions. This has been the widespread
primary cause of major winter and spring annual die-offs.
On the more southerly Arctic Islands, people have also
hunted caribou populations beyond their sustainable
limits. Predation by wolves could have contributed to the
speed and extent of population declines after initial losses
of caribou from some other cause or causes.
Biologists have suggested or speculated on a number of
factors that could be causing the decline of caribou
populations on Canadian Arctic Islands. These include:
• Range deterioration (quantity and quality).
When we consider habitat problems relating to human
activities on caribou range, we must remember that annual
range is only as good as its weakest seasonal link. That is,
little or nothing is gained by protecting only calving
ground areas, if we do not also protect adequate amounts
of summer, autumn, winter, and spring ranges. It is the
entire annual range of the animal that determines its
well-being.
• Relative unavailability of food due to extremely
unfavourable snow and ice conditions.
• Predation, primarily by wolves.
• Excessive rates of hunting beyond a population’s
sustainable limit.
• Large-scale, en masse emigration.
• Outbreaks of disease and parasites.
Relocations of some caribou, emergency or supplementary feeding, artificial insemination, or embryo transplant
schemes might be useful in implementing a small-scale
recovery plan. However, the costs of such activities, the
difficulty of carrying them out, and their unknown value
make them relatively small-scale, last-ditch efforts at best.
• Competition with other caribou.
• Competition with muskoxen.
• Global climate change.
• Disturbing or harassing human activities, such as
aircraft over-flights, vehicle and equipment traffic,
infrastructure and corridor construction, and people on
snowmobiles, all-terrain vehicles, and on foot,
displacing caribou and sometimes supposedly causing
the caribou to move long distances, even beyond their
traditional home ranges (often speculated about, but
never documented).
The relocation of caribou from populations from other
places is a potentially dangerous conservation effort.
Such actions could permanently alter the genetics of
any existing caribou in the area, so their physical,
ecological, and behavioural adaptations could be lost.
Even when no on-site caribou are left, the reintroduction
would put caribou different from the type that was
previously there into an area where, if successful, they
would eventually disperse and corrupt nearby original
populations.
The relationships of Peary caribou and all other Arctic
Island caribou with their respective environments are
complex and any of the above is possible, but the important
Whenever management prescriptions are proposed, the
all-important differences between management of
caribou solely for the purpose of increasing their number
for harvest, versus the conservation of a genetically,
biologically, and behaviourally distinct caribou in Canada
and North America, must be kept foremost in mind. Most
caribou populations on the Canadian Arctic Archipelago
are hunted; any attempt at blending management for
numbers together with conservation efforts requires
detailed consideration of the probable pros and cons of
an action before it is initiated. Trial and error is not a valid
approach when dealing with an endangered species;
instead, the ‘precautionary principle’ should be applied.
“The relocation of caribou ... is a potentially
dangerous conservation effort. Such actions
could permanently alter the genetics of any ...
caribou in the area, so their physical, ecological,
and behavioural adaptations could be lost.”
14
known. How can anyone believe that the muskoxen on
other islands could possibly be an island-wide threat to
caribou? Although the supposed competition between
muskoxen and caribou has been elevated to the level of
dogma, it seems that in reality it should be considered
only a myth.
“Peary caribou and all other Arctic Island
caribou should not be managed regionally as if
they are all the same, nor on an island-by-island
basis because of annually occurring inter-island
The management and conservation of caribou that are
collectively classified as Peary caribou should be carried
out at the level of the geographic population (figure 1).
On the Arctic Islands, a geographic caribou population
consists of two or more islands used in common by a
group of caribou that can be identified as having shared
or related patterns of seasonal and annual movements,
distributions, and range occupancy. Eight geographic
caribou populations shown in figure 1 are recommended,
based on current knowledge, as management and conservation units for all Peary caribou and for all other Arctic
Island caribou on the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Peary
caribou and all other Arctic Island caribou should not be
managed regionally as if they are all the same, nor on an
island-by-island basis because of annually occurring interisland migrations between or among the islands within
the geographic populations’ annual range (geographic
population #6 includes seasonal migrations between those
islands and Boothia Peninsula).
migrations between or among the islands within
the geographic populations’ annual range.”
There is an educational value to captive breeding,
leading to greater public concern, even when there is no
intention to reintroduce the progeny to the wild. It is
most unfortunate that the 1996 proposed capture of Peary
caribou for captive breeding at the Calgary Zoo could not
have been carried out and that the capture proposal in
1997 was rejected by the people of Resolute Bay and Grise
Fiord. If Peary caribou from Bathurst Island or Melville
Island had been captured at that time and placed in the
excellent facilities at the Calgary Zoo under the watchful
eyes of experienced veterinarians, there would now be a
10-year increase in those Peary caribou, most of which
would already be breeding and producing their own young
at the zoo. The presence of Peary caribou at the Calgary
Zoo would have greatly increased public awareness of the
Peary caribou’s plight and the efforts of Canadians to
protect them.
As long as the local Inuit continue to focus on hunting
Peary and all other Arctic Island caribou, preserving these
caribou at low population levels is not feasible. When a
geographic caribou population is being hunted and the
desired annual harvest is high compared to the population’s size, the best long-term approach to harvest
management is to apply an equal emphasis to the
conservation and preservation of those caribou. This can
best be accomplished by maximizing their protection
through emphasizing each geographic population’s differences and minimizing their possible similarities, until,
and unless, objective findings indicate that we should do
otherwise. The Peary caribou and all other Arctic Island
caribou on the Canadian Arctic Archipelago are uniquely
Canadian and they deserve the protection of Canadians
in this changing world. ឣ
There has been a popular belief for the past three decades
or more that muskoxen compete with caribou, causing
caribou to decline in number. This detrimental effect
on caribou has never been documented, even though a
number of biologists have tried to do so. However, the
muskox remains a popular scapegoat, especially when
hunting is indicated in a major decline of caribou, as it
was on Banks Island in association with some years
of prolonged, extremely unfavourable snow and ice
conditions. The area of Banks Island is 70,000 square
kilometres and it currently has an average mean density
of about one muskox per square kilometre — higher than
anywhere else in the entire Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
Yet the initial decline of caribou on Banks Island occurred
when there were relatively few muskoxen present, and
now the caribou are recovering in association with the
greatest island-wide mean density of muskoxen ever
15
CircumArctic Rangifer Monitoring
and Assessment (CARMA) Network
Overview
Don Russell, Wendy Nixon, Gary Kofinas, and
Susan Kutz
not only by limited knowledge of herds and their ranges,
but also by the interaction between wild and domestic
herds. A huge decline in the number of domestic
reindeer since the fall of the Soviet Union has
coincided with the increase in wild herds.
Background
Over four million wild caribou and reindeer (Rangifer
tarandus) inhabit the Arctic regions of the Earth. These
animals provide an economic and cultural mainstay
for Arctic indigenous peoples. Recently, changes in
climate and increases in human activity associated with
the extraction of non-renewable resources are creating
new challenges for resource managers, policy makers, comanagement boards, and hunters of caribou. To help meet
these challenges, the CARMA (CircumArctic Rangifer
Monitoring and Assessment) Network was established in
2004 to assess and monitor the impact of global change
on the relationship between Rangifer, the land, and the
people. The CARMA Network has representation from
co-management boards and from social, biological,
animal health, habitat, and meteorological sciences.
The mission of the CARMA Network is to monitor and
assess the impacts of global change on the human–Rangifer
system across the circumarctic through cooperation, both
geographically and across disciplines. The ultimate objective
of the CARMA Network is to help ensure a sustainable
future for both people and Rangifer.
Many indigenous peoples of the Arctic hunt wild Rangifer.
In all countries we find a mixture of people working for
cash and living off the land. The number of people
involved in each activity changes between the different
countries. Families who live off the land in North America
can often make money from other sources than caribou,
whereas many indigenous hunting families in Russia often
rely strongly on reindeer.
Monitoring the total circumpolar harvest of wild Rangifer
is highly variable in terms of techniques and accuracy.
The total number of wild reindeer harvested is roughly
between 250,000 and 300,000 individuals each year,
which constitutes a major contribution to the regional
economy throughout the circumpolar north. Commercial
operations account for most of the hunting economy of
wild reindeer in Russia. In North America, many, but not
all, indigenous people oppose large-scale commercial
exploitation of caribou herds. They harvest caribou as a
subsistence resource, sharing the meat between households and local communities. In Alaska, federal law
prohibits commercial harvesting of caribou. Indigenous
subsistence harvest accounts for over 80% of the total
harvest of caribou every year in North America. By
comparison, approximately 80% of the total wild
reindeer harvest in Russia is commercial.
The CARMA Network is focusing on Rangifer found in
the tundra regions of North America, Greenland,
Fennoscandia (Finland and Scandinavia), and Russia.
Tundra herds can be larger than 800,000 individuals, such
as the Taimyr herd of Russia. They generally migrate annually from their tundra summer ranges to their taiga
winter ranges. Evidence suggests that numbers of caribou
in tundra herds in North America often go up and down.
Although there is much variability, populations across
North America were generally low in the mid 1970s
and peaked in the mid to late 1990s and early 21st century.
Population fluctuations in North America may be driven
by continental weather patterns such as the Arctic
Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation. Accounting
for the growth and decline of herds in Russia is complicated
Climate change in Rangifer systems
Change and uncertainty have always been a part of the
relationship between people and Rangifer, with periods
of Rangifer scarcity having severe consequences for human
populations who depend on the animals for survival.
Factors that influence the health of individual Rangifer
and thus the productivity of herds include depth,
hardness, and density of snow cover, timing and pattern
of snow melt, duration and intensity of insect harassment
16
Photo: Clive Tesar
Nenets reindeer herders in Siberia demonstrate their roping technique.
(i.e., summer temperatures and wind dynamics), frequency
and extent of fall icing (where ice forms on the land), and
fire occurrence on winter range. These factors can affect
the animals directly through activity expended and food
availability. There are also the indirect effects, such as the
numbers and location of predators, incidence of parasites
and disease, lichen abundance and distribution on
winter ranges, and other climate-related trends on the
spring and summer ranges. The caribou react to these
pressures in different ways, such as nursing their calves
for different lengths of time, changing their range, or
other changes in their behaviour.
survival or reproduction. Arctic caribou have lots of good
quality food in spring and early summer. During this
short period, reproductive females must replenish body
fat and protein depleted during winter while also putting
energy into producing milk. These nutritive demands
are each critical to the reproductive success of the female:
failure to meet the nutritional needs of the current calf
may reduce its survival or reproductive potential, while
failure to replenish maternal body reserves may reduce
the female’s chances of survival or her ability to produce
a calf the next year.
Regional climate trends and local weather play a
critical role in regulating herd productivity. When
animals cannot get enough food, females must “tradeoff ” between what is best for their calves and their own
body reserves, both of which may influence subsequent
CARMA and International Polar Year
The CARMA Network wishes to contribute to the
international initiative “International Polar Year” (IPY), an
intensive two-year focus on studies in the circumpolar
17
and historical diet, and reproductive/ lactation
status), caribou health (quantitative evaluation of
parasites and infectious diseases, and contaminants
levels), and herd demography (population size and
trend, birth rates, calf mortality, adult cow mortality,
and genetic typing). These data will be complemented
with local knowledge on these and other important
indicators (harvesting activities, migration and
distribution in relation to weather, unusual weather
conditions, changes in predation, health and body
condition of Rangifer, etc).
Tundra and taiga
Tundra and taiga are words used to describe
two typical northern landscapes. Tundra is
a Saami word for a northern plain typically
covered with grasses, mosses, lichens, and low
shrubs. There are no trees. Taiga is a Russian
word for the land usually found a little
further south of the tundra. Taiga has many
small trees, including spruce, pine, and
tamarack.
3. Facilitate two years of coordinated, standardized, and
intensive monitoring of selected “reference herds” across
the Arctic.
4. Use comparative analysis to test a number of research
questions through retrospective analysis of existing data
and data generated through the circumpolar monitoring program.
regions. Throughout IPY, the CARMA Network will work
to improve our understanding of the relative vulnerability of regional human–Rangifer systems to climate change
and other changes caused by people. We appreciate the
fact that climate changes and changes caused by people
are very different around the Arctic, but we think these
differences are an opportunity, providing a set of natural
experiments to address research questions through
comparative analysis.
5. Report in the scientific literature and through local
avenues of communication on the status of human–
Rangifer systems, highlighting, where feasible, stressors,
degrees of vulnerabilities, and resilience. Two important objectives are to produce a strategic document
to allow the CARMA Network to focus its future
activities beyond the IPY years, and to produce
university-level curriculum on Rangifer ecology and
the human–Rangifer system.
CARMA Network IPY objectives
The CARMA Network has held three annual meetings.
At the Network’s official launch in November 2004,
delegates identified a number of indicators that would
be important to monitoring the impacts of change.
Many of the protocols for these indicators have been
developed. At the November 2005 gathering, delegates
formulated a number of objectives that CARMA
could realize with funding support through IPY. These
objectives are to:
6. Develop and test decision-support tools that allow for
a meaningful dialogue among northern residents,
resource managers, and project partners to help
facilitate the development of adaptive responses through
policies and practices that support sustainability of
herds and their user communities.
7. Ultimately create a legacy of international cooperation
in the monitoring and assessment of Rangifer that will
far outlive the IPY period.
1. Create a circumpolar database of existing data on
tundra-dwelling, wild Rangifer and identify data gaps
and relative knowledge available among herds.
The next four years will be busy for the CARMA Network
but participants are optimistic that through coordinated monitoring and free information exchange, all those
associated with human–Rangifer systems will be in a
better position to face the future.
2. Support the further development, design, testing,
and implementation of standardized monitoring
protocols to assess the impacts of climate change on
human–Rangifer systems. These protocols include
coordinated monitoring of habitat (green-up pattern,
snow accumulation, and melt, and other Rangiferrelevant climate derivatives such as growing degree
days), individual body condition (body mass and age,
body protein and fat allocation and status, current
For more information on the CARMA Network, see
www.rangifer.net/carma/. ឣ
18
Life on the Edge (of development):
The Bathurst Herd
The Bathurst caribou herd ranges through the heart of
the Canadian North. In the spring and summer, it is up
on the Arctic coast, near Bathurst Inlet in Nunavut. In
the fall and winter, it migrates down through the treeline,
past many different communities, ending up in the vicinity of Yellowknife, the largest urban area in the Northwest
Territories.
What is the present health of the herd?
BC: If you refer to that as the status of the herd, we
just finished a calving ground survey. The number of
breeding females is declining. It’s about 55,000, so
that’s the status of the herd; it is declining. All the key
indicators show that we don’t have as many calves
as we should have had, if you compare the number
with what it is when the herd is healthy and steady and
numbers are high. Sex ratio is below average, another
indicator of the numbers declining.
The Bathurst is still a large herd, numbering about
128,000 according to the latest count. But those numbers are a significant decline from historical levels. The
herd has decreased by 74% in the past 20 years, dropping
from a high of 472,000 in 1986.
The people who rely on and use the herd are anxious.
They are concerned about the future health of the herd.
They are also concerned about what impacts the drop
in herd numbers will have on them. The Government
of the Northwest Territories has already taken some actions
to limit the harvest of the herd. Resident hunters who are
not aboriginal subsistence users have had their allocation
of caribou tags reduced from five per year to two.
“The Bathurst is still a large herd, numbering
about 128,000 according to the latest count.
But those numbers are a significant decline from
historical levels. The herd has decreased by 74%
in the past 20 years, dropping from a high of
472,000 in 1986.”
Northern Perspectives editor Clive Tesar spoke about the
Bathurst herd with Dr. Ray Case and Bruno Croft, both
with the Department of Environment and Natural
Resources of the Government of the Northwest Territories.
If you look at the condition of the animals for the past
few years, it’s below what it should be, which probably
explains some of the other indicators below normal like
I’ve just mentioned. In some years, pregnancy rates are
not as good, which also indicates the health of the
animals is not as good.
How would you describe the importance of the caribou herd
to the NWT in economic terms?
RC: It’s hard to do it in straight economic terms given
the importance culturally and spiritually, but others
can speak to that. Economically, as a major food source,
everybody just needs to look at their grocery list and
figure out how much they spend on meat and try to
figure out how much people in the communities would
have to spend to replace this important food source. There’s
also a tourism industry built up around caribou, outfitting, and nature tours. And I guess the whole image
of the Northwest Territories is caribou-related; there’s
certainly a value in the overall attractiveness of the
Northwest Territories related to caribou.
We think it’s probably linked to nutritional stress, which
is probably linked to variation in weather patterns, which
we’ve seen before. The mechanism involved can be
difficult to explain; the food may not be as abundant as
it used to be, or it could be that the food is there but the
animals cannot access it properly. For instance, increasing insect abundance could prevent the animals from
feeding by harassing them too much, no quality time
spent feeding, snow conditions, snow-pack characteristics could also make it difficult to feed. All those factors
19
What would you characterize as the main threats to the
herd presently?
“I don’t agree with the selling of caribou meat …
BC: If I refer you to the Bathurst management plan, the
one immediate action we can take to minimize the removal
of animals from the group is to minimize the harvest. I
wouldn’t call it a threat, but it’s the one immediate place
where we can intervene and help the herd recover. The
harvest has not been a factor, a direct factor in the decline,
it’s more along the lines of the things I mentioned earlier.
However, being where we are, the harvest has to be
addressed. I think that’s why we took the management
action we took over the last year or so; that was designed
to help the herd recover. To think of it as a major threat
is something I’m uncomfortable with, but it’s definitely
a place where we can do something.
it gives the impression that our caribou are for
sale. Our caribou are not for sale.”
Richard Nerysoo, Chief, Nihtat Gwich’in Council
playing together will affect the status and the health of
the animals, and I believe we’re seeing that.
There are natural oscillations in the size of caribou herds —
how do you separate out that signal from other things
happening to the herd?
What other options are being considered to manage the herd?
BC: The harvest is the very first place you can intervene. That’s the real challenge for our managers. The path
to harvest reduction has been established by law. When
you have subsistence rights and a conservation issue, every
other alternative from a harvesting point of view has to
be addressed first, resident harvest and non-resident harvest, before you can touch First Nation harvest. However,
if you ask me, Bruno Croft, not the biologist, I would say
something like, we have to elevate ourselves above the
rhetoric, the blaming games, and the politics, and the
things that stall the process and spread the hardships if
we can.
Those would be difficult to tease out. The important thing
is we know there will be a full range of factors influencing caribou, especially when numbers are low. The important thing is to try to minimize the impacts from all of
the factors that might influence the size of the herd.
Do you have the sense that the herd is still on the downward
slope or are there signs that it is rebounding?
The low numbers we got in the calving ground survey
were not a surprise; however, in the past year we’ve seen
for the first time since early 2000s, late 1990s, the
animals being in much better condition than they had
been. In the past calendar year, the animals have seemed
healthy, fat, and a good calving rate. One bit of good news
that we have, when we did a calving ground survey, we
had a good birth rate, a decent number of calves on the
calving ground right after birth, and when we did the fall
composition count during the fall migration, we had a
calf survival just about equal to that number when the
herd was healthy, when numbers were steady and high.
Those cows and calves and bulls were all healthy, they
were all browsing properly and there was hardly any snow.
So that’s one bit of good news, but that’s all that I can say;
we need a few years of those conditions before we see
an impact.
We’re already seeing leadership from some of our leaders.
For instance last year, when I went on a community hunt
with chief Fred Sangris, he said, “Here’s what we’re going
“Chief Charlie Football of Wekweti ... said,
‘You know, in the past, I used to feed my
family with ten caribou a month, now I think
we can do it with three caribou a month.’ We need
to hear that kind of proactive approach from all
RC: All I could say is that was good news to hear, but
it’s not enough to come to any conclusions about the end
of the decline. If we get a few good years, caribou can
do amazing things.
our stakeholders ... to work together to find
a solution.”
20
to do, normally we harvest x number of females, this year
we’re going to harvest only 40% of what we usually do.”
And not long ago, I was speaking to Chief Charlie Football
of Wekweti, and he said, “You know, in the past, I used
to feed my family with ten caribou a month, now I think
we can do it with three caribou a month.” We need to
hear that kind of proactive approach from all our
stakeholders, with their own ways of doing things, to take
our situation to a different level, to work together to find
a solution.
There have been several recorded declines and rebounds for
this herd — why is it considered so urgent to take action
this time?
RC: I think there are some big differences, and big problems with trying to use the past to predict the future in
this case. When caribou declined before, they could stay
away from harvest pressure, from disturbance; they could
avoid us. They can’t any more. There’s access by winter
roads, there’s access by aircraft, there’s all sorts of activities
across their ranges. So we can’t assume that the future will
be just as in the past; we have to deal with it in that cautious
manner. The caribou have demonstrated the ability to
rebound from lows in the past, but we have to make sure
we give them the ability to do that in the future. ឣ
RC: I think the key action is to ensure we have communication with all of the people involved in this issue, and everybody identify what they can do. I’d be hesitant to say what
government is thinking about in management actions. I
think the key is for everybody to do what they can.
Photo: Courtesy of Department of Environment and Natural Resources, GNWT.
Taking more bulls instead of cows from caribou herds is one management option under consideration.
21
Industry and Caribou: Can They
Coexist?
People in communities around the central Arctic have
seen a growth of mining and mining exploration in their
region over the past few years. Diamond mines have
sprung up in an area once only rarely visited. Prospectors
and exploration teams continue to criss-cross the barrens,
looking for new mines. While many people have
welcomed the jobs, they have also been concerned about
the potential impact of these activities on caribou.
One of the first ones is the philosophical position the
companies took that caribou have the “right of way.” How
that actually plays out is that the mines stop when
caribou are on the mine roads, vehicles grind to halt
and wait for the caribou to pass so that it’s driven into
people that caribou have the right of way.
In addition to the monitoring that we do, the aerial
surveys, and the biologists onsite watching how the
caribou interact with the mine infrastructure, we also have
a very successful program with the Inuit at Ekati [BHP
diamond mine], and Diavik’s [diamond mine close to
BHP] done some work with the Dene looking at choke
points on the mine sites, where do you not want caribou
and what some passive ways are of moving them around,
which has led to Diavik trying some soft fences to
divert animals around areas. BHP has tried inuksuit [the
plural of inukshuk, piles of rocks shaped like people] to
create drive lines like the Inuit used to hunt with. A few
caribou will wander through them, but the big herds tend
to follow linear alignments.
Chris Hanks represented the NWT/Nunavut Chamber
of Mines’ views on caribou at a recent meeting. The
Chamber speaks on behalf of the mining and exploration
industry in NWT and Nunavut. Chris spoke with
Northern Perspectives editor Clive Tesar.
“When the buffalo went from the plains, the
people of the plains, the Cree, the Dakota — their
culture died, their spirit died. Here, we have a
Given the sorts of things done to date, and the sense of urgency
and anxiety around caribou, is there more that can be done
by the mining companies?
chance to save it.”
Fred Sangris, Chief, Yellowknives Dene
The companies are helping subsidize the radio collars for
caribou. The herd really needs 50–60 collars to give a statistically valid number; they’ve got 12–13 collars now, so
the companies have come together to help fund that. The
companies are helping fund NWT government wolf, bear,
and wolverine surveys — these are the prime carnivores
preying on the caribou. I know that the companies have
been invited to sit down with the local wildlife board;
they’re reaching out to try to engage them.
How is the mining industry approaching the question of the
caribou declines?
Management of caribou has been a concern of the mines
from the very beginning. When we went into permitting
for the first mine, BHP, caribou numbers were high, but
the concern was still there that there could be an effect,
so the goal all along for all the mining companies involved
in the diamond play and the gold play was to do it in a
way that wouldn’t harm the caribou. I don’t think we’ve
changed our methods with the decline because we were
trying to run programs that would allow us to mitigate
the impacts of the mine already.
On the mine sites, they’re doing vegetation uptake studies to look at what is being taken up in the vegetation. If
caribou eat vegetation on the mine site, what is the risk
to somebody down the road who shot that caribou?
Is there a risk to humans? At what point would there be
[a risk]? So you know, they’re trying to understand the
full range of health and environment issues that surround
caribou, and to come up with ways to manage it better.
What measures are being taken now that you feel minimize
the impacts of the mining companies on caribou?
22
The individual impacts of the mines seem to be fairly well
understood now, but what is not so well understood is the
cumulative effect of several different mines and what
effect they may produce on caribou behaviours. What
more needs to be done there?
When you talk about cumulative effects, I think it’s got
to be a much bigger subject. You have to understand the
full range of things that happen to caribou — changes in
Photo: Courtesy of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, GNWT.
I think the studies done on the mine sites are pretty
comprehensive. We know that cows and calves tend to
stay just a little further away. We’re trying to understand
individually what the effects are. None of the effects we’ve
seen are critical — we’re not talking about mortality,
nothing that causes an issue at the group or herd level —
whatever we’ve seen is at the individual level. We’ve seen
wolves using the airport electric fences to drive the
caribou up and take an animal, bears hiding behind
rock piles along the
edge of the road and
leaping out at caribou,
so they’re using the
mine site like they use
the rest of the tundra
environment. But since
we do not see effects on
groups or populations,
we do not think the
effects we are seeing
will be cumulative.
Being diverted around
BHP or Ekati is not
going to have a longterm effect on caribou.
So we do not think,
given what we know,
that contact with the
mines is going to cause
effects at the population
level. What we have
It has been estimated that replacing caribou meat and other country foods with store-bought meat would cost northern indigenous peoples millions of dollars.
seen is entirely due to
predators. We have not
range, changes in insects — and within that we need to
seen collisions on the road, we have not seen them fall
understand what does that mean as they pass the mine.
into pits or containment berms, measures taken to preThe average caribou northbound is by the mines fairly
vent those things appear to be working, so the effects
quickly. They walk 30–40 kilometres a day, so in a matter
are really pretty marginal.
of hours they’ve walked right past the Ekati [diamond]
That said, we have to be vigilant; we can’t stop doing what
mine and the BHP [diamond] mine. Coming south post
we’re doing because if you get careless something could
calving they move more slowly and are more spread out;
happen. Continued diligence on behalf of the companies
they are apt to be around for longer periods of time.
is the best protection for the caribou, to prevent them
The object there is to make sure they won’t get into trouble
from becoming an issue. ឣ
on the mine site. We’ve erected big berms around pits,
and moved them away from other areas with fences and
other methods. They use the roads in the summer; they
use the waste rock piles to get away from insects, so we
have to be aware of that.
23
The Bathurst Herd: Tradition, Food,
and Responsibility
There are many human users of the Bathurst caribou
concern that we’re going to be involved and do our part
herd, ranging from bow hunters who fly in to bag a
as much as we can.
trophy, to subsistence hunters who rely on the herd to
Your society has changed over the
put meat on the table. The
last few years, people are getPhoto: Courtesy of Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources, GNWT.
Yellowknives Dene, who live
ting jobs, going out to work at
around Yellowknife on the north
mines, how does this change how
shore of Great Slave Lake, are
people value caribou?
traditionally caribou hunters.
Fred Sangris is a chief of the
It doesn’t change very much.
Yellowknives Dene, and he spoke
Most of the people that work
with Northern Perspectives editor
at mines or oil and gas indusClive Tesar.
try, when they do get time off,
they’re back on the land again.
They take their families on the
land, because they have famiIt’s very important. I’ve been Making dry meat. This traditional method of preserving caribou meat is lies to feed. Another part of it is
working with the elders on our still widely used in the north.
there’s a high degree of diabetes
history for the past ten years, and
in our community because of
most of the history bring people back to the caribou, the
too much junk food, so now people are more aware of that
trails, the history, how our people depended on it. Without
and thinking traditional food was the best thing after all.
the caribou, we wouldn’t have made it through. The
A lot of the people who work at the mine still have a concaribou provided everything, tools, food, and clothing.
nection to the land. Even though they have a good income
The caribou are central to Dene culture. Even today, when
doesn’t mean they go to the grocery store and just buy
people harvest it, they have so much respect for caribou.
cans of beans. The caribou and the whitefish is still out
But now the caribou is in trouble with declining numthere; they’re harvesters as well.
bers, and so people are all concerned. There’s so much
What do you think is driving the decline of the herd?
How important is the Bathurst
herd to the Yellowknives?
Twenty-five years ago, I made my living as a trapper on
the south side of Lac de Gras. I saw the great herds go
through in the winters; sometimes I’d spend the winter
there with the caribou grazing nearby. My family and
other families were nearby and caribou were important.
There was no winter road, no traffic; there was no diamond rush and no gold rush at that time. If you broke
down there, you’d be stuck for weeks; there was no airplane, no nothing going on, not like today. Now when
the winter roads are open, the trucks start moving, you
better get out of the way, or you get run over; that’s how
much traffic is out there now. I think we have to ask,
should we regulate the winter roads now? It opens up
access to the caribou area too. A lot of things come into
“We’ve been blessed with large numbers of
caribou, we may have forgotten what it was like
not to have this abundance.... While herds were
plentiful we benefited — now that numbers are
down it’s our turn to help them.”
Michael McLeod, NWT Minister of Environment and Natural
Resources
24
question, including the number of flights into the area.
In the end of August we saw eight low-level flights in the
Mackay lake area while we were on our fall hunt; we’d
never seen that number before. We’re looking at all
factors and we’re trying to figure out what is causing the
decline of caribou.
“In the end of August we saw eight low-level
flights in the Mackay lake area while we were
on our fall hunt; we’d never seen that number
before. We’re looking at all factors and we’re
From the 1990s, the population of wolves and other
predators has gone up, with the decline of the trapping
industry. I think that’s an area where the outfitter could
help us, concentrate less on caribou and more on predators. In the aboriginal way, we’re not able to do that
ourselves, but the hunters could help us.
trying to figure out what is causing the decline
of caribou.”
What management measures would you like to see?
in the near future, but before that happens we need to
meet with a lot of people. We hope that the next step is
an elders’ conference, and bring in the trappers and hunters
affected. We need to really consciously think about
regulating ourselves. We know the caribou is declining,
Where there are settled claims, the government needs to
support the wildlife management boards. In areas like
ours, where claims are not settled, we still need to work
in regulating our own hunting area and setting up our
own wildlife management boards. I think those will come
Photo: Clive Tesar
25
we know the numbers; we know it’s real and it’s going
to affect us in many ways. As aboriginal people, we have
to make sure we play our part as well.
that the numbers will come back strongly, it’s going to
affect them. We know that there will be some strong words
exchanged, but we have to be understanding, we all have
to try to do our part. If the herd is going to be there for
the next generation, we have to think about that.
Otherwise the next generation may not see caribou at all,
so we have to do our part, and ask all people to work with
us as well. ឣ
When you start talking about regulating subsistence hunting, what sort of reaction do you think you’re going to get?
It’s going to be kind of difficult. In our region there are
many families who depend on caribou for ceremonies,
for sharing, for community, for gatherings. Caribou is the
centre of our life. To ask our people to go on regulation
to regulate themselves, to maybe even look at quotas so
From Extraordinary to the Brink
and Recovery: Lessons from the
Fortymile Herd
By Rod Boertje, Alaska Department of Fish and Game
Why was the herd so huge? Olaus Murie and his brother,
Adolph, give us some clues that ring true today. On a
six-month journey by dog sled encompassing much
of the interior of Alaska in winter 1922–1923, no
evidence of wolves was observed. In fact, wolves were
described as very scarce from 1916 to 1925. The Murie
brothers thought that disease may have been responsible for the lack of wolves. No diseases are known today
that would reduce wolf numbers to such scarcity in this
region, but the Muries believed that the sled dogs
that came to the area during the Gold Rush may have
brought diseases that killed wolves, at least until the wolf
population gained immunity.
In 1920, the Fortymile herd was surely one of the largest
caribou herds ever to exist in North America, ranging
from southern Yukon to central Alaska. In that year,
biologist Olaus Murie saw the herd take 20 days to
cross the Steese Highway in a migration about 60 miles
wide between Fairbanks and the Yukon River. Olaus
estimated herd numbers at 568,000 during this “typical”
fall migration and concluded it was safe to say this was
an underestimate. The vast range of the herd from
Whitehorse to well north of Fairbanks adds verification
that the herd’s historic size was extraordinary.
Regardless of the cause, wolves soon recovered and
have been described as abundant from 1925 to the
present except for brief periods during the late 1940s,
early 1950s, and late 1950s, when the U.S. federal
government poisoned and shot wolves to reduce predation on Fortymile caribou. The return of the wolves in
the mid-1920s, coupled with commercial hunting of
Fortymile caribou from the late 1800s until the 1930s,
is widely believed to be the primary factor causing the
decline of the herd, but the effects of weather and food
supplies were not studied.
“The return of the wolves in the mid-1920s,
coupled with commercial hunting of Fortymile
caribou from the late 1800s until the 1930s, is
widely believed to be the primary factor causing
the decline of the herd, but the effects of weather
and food supplies were not studied.”
After the 1920 estimate of herd numbers, the next
systematic estimates occurred during the 1950s and early
26
In 1995, the Fortymile Team formulated a plan to unite
agency direction and to increase the herd. The Team
had representatives from each of the affected agencies
as well as native leaders and private individuals with a
diversity of opinions. The permitted harvest of the herd
was reduced from 2% of herd strength to less than 1%,
and action was taken to reduce the number of calves
taken by wolves. The herd grew during the Team’s tenure
(1995–2000) from about 23,000 to 35,000 caribou and
growth continued to 43,000 by 2003. Nine years
(1994–2002) of collaring 50 to 80 newborn caribou
and diligent follow-up of causes of mortality confirmed
that wolves were the major predator of calves, and that
calf mortality was the chief factor slowing growth of
the herd.
“Nine years (1994–2002) of collaring 50 to 80
newborn caribou and diligent follow-up of causes
of mortality confirmed that wolves were the
major predator of calves, and that calf mortality
was the chief factor slowing growth of the herd.”
1960s, when the herd was estimated by various biologists
to number near 50,000. We know that the herd regularly
crossed the Steese Highway in those years. At its present
level of 40,000 caribou, the herd rarely crosses the highway, so it is likely the herd numbered
50,000 or more prior to the mid-1960s.
A further decline to only 6,000 to
8,000 caribou by 1975 was relatively
well documented because moose and
caribou populations declined in the early
1970s throughout much of Alaska.
Over-hunting was permitted in the
early 1970s in hopes of increasing calf
production of the herd. Heavy snowfall, cold winters, and increasing wolf
numbers would likely have caused a
natural decline, but with over-hunting,
the natural decline was accelerated. To
this day, harvest of the herd has been
maintained at a conservative 2% or less
of estimated herd size to favor growth
and range expansion.
The herd grew steadily from its low
point in 1975 to about 22,000 caribou
in 1990 and then stabilized for several
years. Concern about the stability of the
herd set in motion the formation of the
international Fortymile Caribou Herd
Management Team. Four competing
jurisdictions (two U.S. federal agencies,
Alaska, and Yukon) had differing
management goals for the herd in the
early 1990s and this was unsatisfactory
to the public and to the agencies
involved. The idea for a unified mission
to recover the herd originated in the
Yukon, where a large void of caribou distribution was created by the decline of
the Fortymile herd.
Photo: Rod Boertje
Five wolves killed 16 calves in an area of 200 square miles on the Fortymile caribou calving range late on
May 28, 1994. Rod Boertje and helicopter pilot Rick Swisher collected 14 calves for this photo; 10 dams
had returned to the site and the calves were still warm. The 5 wolves (2 had radio collars) had just killed an
adult female caribou 2 km away when we arrived and the wolves were feeding on the cow.
27
To gain widespread political support for increasing
Fortymile herd size, the Fortymile Team chose non-lethal
techniques to reduce wolf predation. Sterilizing the
dominant wolves in 15 key wolf packs and moving the
remaining wolves apparently relieved some predation
on the herd, because calf survival was relatively high
during most of the ensuing years. When the herd
exceeded 40,000, winter expansions again crossed the
Yukon River near Dawson in the east and the Steese
Highway on the west; thus the herd reclaimed parts
of its ancestral range.
largely replaced by younger, reproducing wolves by May
2005. Lethal aerial wolf control by private citizens was a
less costly alternative and was initiated in a small portion
of the herd’s winter range in winter 2004–2005. The wolf
population was increasing in other portions of the range,
so the wolf control area was expanded to most of the herd’s
Alaska winter range. Few wolves have been taken this
winter because of a lack of snow. The herd has struggled
the last few years and has retreated from its recent range
expansions. Our best estimates of the herd are near 40,000
caribou and we continue to hope for an increase where
range expansions will benefit both Canadians and
Alaskans. ឣ
Costly sterilization and translocation programs eventually lost political support, and the sterilized wolves were
Photo: Courtesy of Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
In spring 1998, 18 non-dominant wolves were translocated from the Fortymile range to the Kenai Peninsula to bolster genetic variability.
28
Developing a Cooperative Harvest
Management Strategy for the
Porcupine Caribou Herd
Submitted by the Porcupine Caribou Management
Board
Traditional uses of
Porcupine caribou:
Elders’ stories reflect on thousands of years of caribou
migrations. Always moving, the caribou seek plentiful,
nutrient-rich food and safety from predators and biting
insects. The Porcupine caribou herd’s migration takes it
through the United States as well as Canada. In Canada,
the herd runs through the Yukon and the Northwest
Territories. It crosses through the traditional territories of
the Gwitch’in, Inuvialuit, Tr’ondek Hwech’in, and Nacho
Nyak Dun First Nations. With so many governments
involved, protecting this herd is, to say the least,
complicated.
• The herd is harvested for subsistence use by its
User Communities.
• This herd has been the mainstay for people
within the Porcupine caribou range for over
20,000 years.
• Traditional caribou harvesting activities express
and reinforce the bond of the caribou users with
First Nation people within the range of the herd have
relied on Porcupine caribou for subsistence for over 20,000
years. Because of greatly increased human activity arising
from industrial and residential developments in the North
over the past several decades, a coordinated conservation
effort has become necessary. Caribou traditions are the
foundation of local traditions; therefore, the survival of
local indigenous cultures depends on the herd.
the land, their communities, and their families.
• Traditionally, all parts of the caribou are used;
there is no waste.
• Today, caribou skins are used to make traditional
clothing from head to toe, from hair pieces to
To ensure protection of the herd and its habitat within
the Canadian portion of the herd’s range, representatives
from all Canadian jurisdictions in the herd’s range signed
the Porcupine Caribou Management Agreement in 1985.
The Agreement established the Porcupine Caribou
Management Board (PCMB) and set out its scope of
authority and responsibility. The Board manages the herd
to conserve it, and to ensure that local indigenous
people can continue to use it for subsistence.
moccasins, mukluks, and parkas. Bones and
antler are used to make tools.
• All edible parts of the caribou are eaten: caribou
heads are roasted over a fire and consumed; head
soup is served as a delicacy at special feasts; bone
marrow is extracted, cooked, and eaten; even
hooves are jellied and enjoyed.
In 1987, the Agreement Between the Government of Canada
and the Government of the United States of America on
the Conservation of the Porcupine Caribou Herd was signed.
The International Board has not met for several years —
not since the American board members’ terms expired.
a critical habitat, are in the American Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge, and because there is pressure to drill for
oil in the refuge, the possibility of human activity in the
calving grounds poses the greatest threat to the herd’s
survival. This international issue is beyond the scope of
the PCMB’s authority.
Despite attempts on the Canadian side to pressure
the American government to participate, no new board
members have been appointed and thus the International
Board cannot meet. The herd’s preferred calving grounds,
29
Photo: Courtesy of Dept. of the Environment and Natural Resources, GNWT.
and Inuvialuit have settled their land claims and have
some authority to make hunting regulations within their
territories. These indigenous governments can take an
active role in developing consistent hunter education
strategies and voluntarily impose harvest restrictions on
their beneficiaries if they deem it necessary. In addition,
mandatory restrictions on aboriginal harvests are allowed
for conservation and public safety reasons under all landclaim agreements.
With so many jurisdictions involved, leaders of all levels
of government and the user groups agree that it is imperative to bring all parties together to work out a plan to
harmonize harvest management. Some examples of
harvest management measures might involve imposing
harvest quotas to all harvesters or to particular groups
of harvesters, limiting harvest in particular locations,
limiting harvest to particular seasons, limiting or
eliminating harvest of cow caribou and limiting or
eliminating harvest of rutting bulls. A forward-thinking
plan will minimize conflicts between user groups. Sensible,
uniform regulations throughout the range, developed with
hunters, will improve hunter compliance with the
recommendations and regulations. Making small changes
in hunting practices now may prevent the need for crisis
management later.
A successful hunt.
Even though the calving grounds remain untouched,
scientific research suggests that the herd’s population has
been slowly declining. The PCMB estimates the rate of
decline to be about 1.5% per year since 1990. At the
last census, taken in 2001, there were about 123,000
caribou in the herd. Forest fires, unpredictable migration
patterns, and other unusual events have prevented a
census since that time. The PCMB has determined that
this decline in population deserves serious attention immediately, before the population decreases to the point
that the herd might have trouble recovering.
Identifying harvest practices as a way to protect the
herd was a big step, but that opened a new set of questions.
What harvest practices need to be addressed, and by
implementing what measures? Would those measures be
implemented as voluntary recommendations or mandatory regulations? There is broad agreement in principle
that all groups should engage in hunter education programs
that incorporate local traditional knowledge. This
program will be aimed at reducing wounding loss and
meat wastage and increasing respectful hunting. By
hunting better, perhaps no one will have to be asked to
hunt less. This program is in the process of being developed
so that it can be delivered to numerous audiences, including resident hunters, First Nations, and youth. By
sharing the program for widespread delivery, the PCMB
hopes hunters will receive an accurate, consistent, and
uniform message about regulations and best practices.
Contaminants and disease have been ruled out as significant causes for the herd’s decline. Speculations about
the causes of the population decline often point to effects
of climate change. Obviously, controlling climate change
is beyond the scope of the PCMB’s resources and authority; mitigating climate change might take more years than
the herd can afford. Other causes could be predators,
but none in particular stand out as culprits. In addition,
predator–prey relationships are part of a complicated
system, and tampering with that system could introduce
undesired consequences. Logically, then, if controlling
diseases, contaminants, climate, and predators aren’t
options, the PCMB had to turn to regulating the
one human activity that does affect the herd directly:
hunting. The coordinated effort, then, by all parties will
be in the form of a Harvest Management Strategy.
At present, despite the herd’s decline, there are no
harvest quotas for First Nation hunters. In fact, the first
outfitter quota was just established as recently as 2001.
The user groups have committed to coming together
with PCMB representatives to review scientific and
traditional knowledge and identify thresholds at which
restrictive measures such as quotas or bans on cow
harvest should be activated. These decisions will be
All parties have agreed that, generally speaking, a coordinated conservation effort would be best for the user
groups as well as the herd. All of the user First Nations
30
referred back to the PCMB, which will make formal
recommendations to the territorial Ministers.
consultation and developing the planning protocol,
and this process is nearly complete. Phase 2 is the development of a harvest management plan. Phase 3 is the
development of a Harvest Management Agreement signed
by all parties.
The Harvest Management Strategy is intended to empower
governments, First Nations, and Inuvialuit to make a
proactive plan to conserve the herd on the Canadian
side. The planning process will involve an education component for participants that addresses caribou conservation
as well as First Nations’ rights and obligations under the
land-claim agreements. The Board’s research will use
modern scientific studies and the traditional wisdom of
community members. All communities will be brought
together to weigh harvest regulation options, and the
parties will develop an agreement on uniform enforceable
regulations throughout the range of the herd. By recognizing the First Nations as key decision-makers, we anticipate
improved hunter compliance. After all, in this remote region,
hunter compliance is vital to any regulations aimed at
conserving the herd.
Most groups have already submitted a letter to the PCMB
committing to participation in the process at their own
expense. The Governments of Canada, Yukon, and
Northwest Territories and the PCMB have already
provided financial contributions for Phase I of the Plan.
In the herd’s range, there are more than 10 times the
number of Porcupine caribou than humans, yet people
have a terrific impact on the herd’s well-being. With
systematic planning and extensive community involvement, this Harvest Management Plan will ensure that the
herd is most effectively managed, that harmonized policies
and regulations are implemented by governments, that
management measures are supported by the affected community members, and that communities participate at all
levels in the decision-making. ឣ
The development of the Strategy will happen in three
phases over three years. Phase I involves community
Co-management – Too Slow in
a Crisis?
Co-management Boards are often cited as one of the success stories of northern Canada. These boards typically
include equal representation from local indigenous people
and nominees of the federal and territorial governments
(who may also be indigenous people). The Chair is usually
chosen by consensus among the three parties.
What are the challenges involved in working with
co-management boards?
People need to understand roles and responsibilities of
individual land-claims agreements. I’ve found often you
have to go back and open up the agreements, which in
come cases have been settled for as long as 20 years. There’s
some interpretation that has taken place, but more
often it’s just being clear what is in the agreements and
what it means.
The boards have slightly different levels of authority from
board to board, but in practice the board decisions are
taken as recommendations by the territorial governments
concerned, and usually followed. The boards are inclusive, and promote a diversity of viewpoints in decisionmaking. But are they the right vehicle for decision-making
in a fast-moving situation, such as sudden declines in caribou numbers? Doug Larson has a perspective on this question. He is the chief of wildlife management for the Yukon
government, and a member of two co-management
boards, including the Porcupine Caribou Management
Board (PCMB). He spoke with Northern Perspectives
editor Clive Tesar.
The other thing I’ve noticed a lot because I sit on two
co-management boards is process. Process is bogging us
down a lot. It’s getting better as we learn the process, and
it’s not only the co-management boards; it’s governments
that have to learn the process. Because I’m a government member, I have to sit down with my government
and remind them what the process is, and I’m sure that
aboriginal governments have to do the same. So we’re
all kind of going through this transition learning what
31
Photo: Peary caribou photographed by SD MacDonald. Reproduced with permission of Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa, Canada.
Every year, caribou naturally shed their antlers.
the land claims mean and how you implement
them. I have a flow chart that explains that in the
Yukon if a population decreases to a level, you have to
implement a total allowable harvest through a very, very
complicated process. There’s a flow chart that has arrows
going all over the place. You don’t even have to understand the chart; you just look at it and you can see that
it’s a very complicated process. For that to work, there are
just simple things — like you have to be available! It’s
incredibly hard to get 10 people together for a meeting
to begin with, and then you have to agree on what you’re
there for, and agree on a solution.
and to the users to step in and make a decision. I would
like to see governments step up to the plate and fill
that responsibility.
Other challenges that co-management boards have? Top
of my mind, it’s about building relationships — and it
takes a long time. You have to get to know people.
Some of our meetings, we sit down and talk about our
families, who they are, where they’re from — it’s all about
building our relationship. One of the challenges is that
there’s a three or five year tenure, and somebody else comes
on when you’ve just got to know each other. Without that
building of relationships, I don’t think co-management
is going to work.
My theory is we get bogged down in process for so long
the resource suffers while we’re trying to figure out what
the process is. So I think the government has the authority and responsibility to step in if for some reason the
co-management boards can’t reach a decision. We can’t
let this go on forever, and I’m thinking particularly of the
caribou situation, the Porcupine caribou herd in particular
on the Yukon side. I know my government is looking very
closely at the situation on this side, the Bluenose herds
and the decline there. I know my government is not going
to wait until the Porcupine herd declines by 70% or 80%;
we cannot do that. We have a responsibility to the resources
If co-management boards take so long to make a decision
that the government steps in and makes a decision, doesn’t
that strain those relationships you’re talking about building?
That’s a good point, and we’re aware of that; it would be
a last resort. But remember that in all of the land-claims
agreements — at least on the Yukon side — conservation
is paramount. Aboriginal rights are very important, we
know that, it’s written into the land-claims agreements.
But they’re all subject to conservation. So that’s what
I base my position on; governments do have that
32
responsibility only for conservation. And it’s only as a
last resort if you can’t work things out. You’re right; you
jeopardize that relationship you’ve been building. I can
say for my part that I would never propose that unless the
co-management boards I sit on are well aware of the
situation that’s coming up. You don’t want to blindside
anyone; you work through consultation and consensus
if you can.
talking about caribou — that’s just one species. There are
multiple species; there are multiple processes. I feel for
the communities, I understand why they’re grappling with
it. I don’t have a solution to it, except if we streamline
processes, that might help.
I don’t want to throw a dark cloud on the whole process,
because I’m a firm believer in it and I think it will work.
I’m a very strong believer in traditional knowledge and
local knowledge; I think we don’t use it to the extent we
should be using it. But as government, we have to look
at the whole public interest, aboriginal, non-aboriginal,
consumptive or non-consumptive; it even goes beyond
that to the intrinsic value of the resource. We have an
obligation to the caribou and the other wildlife populations just to make sure that they’re there even if nobody
uses them. I take that very seriously as well.
The challenges become higher and more complex. For
example, the Porcupine herd ranges from Alaska into
Yukon and the Northwest Territories. On the Canadian
side it ranges through Ivvavik Park; it goes through the
north slope of the Yukon. So there’s federal government, there’s Yukon government, there’s the Government
of the Northwest Territories, then there’s a number of
land-claims agreements. For instance, there’s the Tetlit
Gwich’in agreement that creates primary and secondary
use areas in Yukon, giving them different obligations and
rights than on the NWT side of the border. On top of
that, there’s the Porcupine Caribou Management
Agreement that gives First Nations extended rights
outside of the primary and secondary use areas. So you
start getting the picture — it’s like an onion with layers
and layers and layers. What I’m trying to do on the
Porcupine Caribou Management Board is to try to focus
on digestible chunks. We’re not going to influence the
Alaskan government so let’s just cut that chunk of the
range out of our discussions, because we’re not going to
influence it. But we can influence what happens in the
Yukon and NWT, so that’s one small example of how we
have to focus; otherwise you can just get bogged down
and pessimistic.
A lot of resources, including caribou, cross jurisdictions.
What are the challenges implicit in that?
How could you fix the co-management process to ensure it
works as it should?
There’s turnover of individuals on the boards, and often
you’ll find that new members are not as familiar with their
land-claims agreements as they should be. It is worth
spending a day with new members to review what their
roles and responsibilities are. If you can get that straight
you’ll save a lot of time and the process will go a lot
smoother. That’s my number one recommendation.
When I go to meetings as a government representative I
go to co-management meetings, sit on those boards, and
try to take my government hat off, leave the politics
behind. I know we all have biases that are difficult to leave
behind, but I make a conscious effort to do that. We’re
there as a group of individuals with different experience
who can put our heads together and come up with the
best solution for managing a resource. After we’ve done
that it’s my responsibility to go back to my government,
tell them what was discussed, and give them a heads up if
something’s coming along. If it might need a regulation
(and it can take two years in the Yukon government to
get a regulation in place), I can start that process. If it
doesn’t have to be implemented, you can just withdraw.
To do that you have to understand the process and
where the bottlenecks are. If we could all do that, not
just the Yukon government, but also First Nations
governments, that would go a long way. Capacity is a
very big challenge. I see that as one of the bottlenecks in
co-management, the capacity the communities have. We’re
The PCMB is putting together a harvest management
strategy that we hope is going to be the ticket to getting
all of the users at the table to talk about solutions. It’s clear
to me that if the communities and the users aren’t part of
the solution, they won’t buy into it and we’ll be butting
heads forever. That’s what we’re trying to resolve in the
Yukon; there’s a lot of controversy over hunting on the
Dempster Highway. We know that the regulations in place
are not viewed favourably especially by First Nations on
this [NWT] side of the border. But again, the government of the time felt it was necessary; there were public
safety and conservation issues. So there are many, many
challenges as soon as you get a population that spans or
ranges over multiple jurisdictions. I think the solution
is we just keep talking, and get everybody in the same
room, because what I find is if you’re not all in the same
room you won’t be on the same page; you’re all talking
different solutions instead of finding one solution. ឣ
33
Being Caribou
The Porcupine caribou herd’s calving grounds in northeastern Alaska are a source of constant controversy.
On one side, some Alaskan politicians and oil interests
want to open up the calving grounds to exploration and
development. On the other side, Gwich’in people in Alaska
and Canada who rely on the herd are adamant that the
area should remain undisturbed. They are backed by
the Canadian government.
The debate over development in the calving grounds
is becoming more pointed. The Porcupine herd
numbered about 178,000 in 1989. It is now estimated at
around 110,000. Like other central Arctic herds, it is
declining. At the same time, the American government
is pushing ‘energy security’ as a priority, which includes
the development of any available oil and gas reserves in
the United States, in an attempt to reduce U.S. reliance
on foreign fuels.
The calving grounds are in a protected area called the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. For the past several years,
bills have been introduced in Washington in an attempt
to open up the refuge to development. Each time, the
attempts have been staved off, but the votes have often
been very close. I once asked a representative of an Alaskan
conservation organization how she felt after winning one
of these votes. She was surprisingly glum; “We never win,”
she said, “We just put off losing.”
In 2003, Karsten Heuer and Leanne Allison, travelling
on foot and by skis, followed the Porcupine Caribou herd
for more than 1,500 kilometres from Yukon Territory
to Alaska. Later, they went to Washington to brief U.S.
politicians on their experiences. Karsten wrote about their
experiences in a book, Being Caribou. The following
two excerpts are from that book.
“I hadn’t really used my body since we flew to Kaktovik, and I strode off, relishing the feeling of pooled blood running back
into my legs. But after twenty minutes of brisk travel, the pleasure gave way to a worrisome fatigue. Shaky and weak from a
fortnight of sitting, I lay on the ground for a brief rest.
Lying there at eye level with the tundra, I noticed things that weren’t obvious from a standing position: clumps of caribou
hair were caught on the undersides of bushes, and beneath them, tips of bleached and moss-covered tines of old antlers poked
from the ground. I’d seen dozens, if not hundreds, of the polished and blood-stained antlers that the cows had cast in the
previous days, but these rough, half-buried specimens were a new discovery. Crawling on hands and knees, I made my way to
the closest of the bunch and gently tugged it free. Roots, old caribou hair, and pellets of half-decomposed scat sloughed off its
pockmarked surface, revealing the teeth marks where countless rodents had come to feed. I reached into the hole, trying to
measure how much of the earth beneath me was hair and scat, but what I found was yet another well-preserved tine. I rolled
onto my knees and scanned the surrounding sea of tussocks, feeling as though I was understanding the magnitude of the
calving grounds for the first time.
How many antlers? I asked myself. How many layers? How much hair, scat, bone, and afterbirth? Buried how deep?
I thought of all the ways in which I’d heard the calving grounds described — Olaus Murie’s “Garden of Eden,” Roger Kaye’s
“Sistine Chapel,” the Gwich’in’s “Sacred Place Where Life Begins.” And then I thought of the television clip I’d seen of Alaskan
Senator Frank Murkowski on the floor of the U.S. Senate eighteen months earlier.
“This is what it looks like,” he’d said, waving a sheet of blank paper during one of many pro-development pitches he’d made
on Capitol Hill for the exploitation of the refuge. Frozen. Barren. Empty. “Nothing but snow and ice.”
All the way back to the tent, I thought about what would happen if the drilling rigs were to arrive. Undoubtedly they would
be staffed with engineers and experts from oil-rich places such as Texas and Alberta — people who understand the equipment
but not the land. Same job, different place, they would joke, rubbing their hands in the chilly Arctic air.
But such disconnection between one’s actions and their effect is no joke, it’s the problem. If the giant drill bit rips into the land
here, it would be the gauges and dials they’d watch, not the caribou antlers and old birds’ nests flying from the torn ground.
Two weeks on, two weeks off. Pockets stuffed full of money, they would fly home between shifts, not knowing what
they’d done.” (p. 135)
34
“Leanne and I had few expectations when we walked up the marble steps and into the first of four meetings with senators
and congressmen, but we were nonetheless disappointed when it was an aide who sat down with us instead of the decision
maker himself.
“You’ve got five minutes,” she explained, pointing outside the door to the full room where men in suits of all sizes and stripes waited
their turn. The American Automakers Association, Focus on the Family, the National Rifle Association — we were just two more
people in an endless stream of lobbyists she had to listen to as we championed yet another cause. Searching for the right words to put
into the right sentences, Leanne and I did our best to give an overview of what we’d learned about caribou on our trip.
The aide looked interested at first; she even wrote something down when we mentioned the skittish cows on the calving grounds,
but soon her leg was going again, bobbing in time with the second hand on the clock. We tried everything to pull her back,
telling her about the bugs and wolves in the hopes she might conclude the caribou already went through enough, but when
it came to oil development, her mind was made up.
She pushed the small stack of photos back toward me and slid back her chair. “That sounds like a wonderful trip,” she said,
“but the bottom line for voters on this issue is cheap gas.”
“Pardon me?” I asked, unsure I’d heard right.
“I know it sounds terrible,” she apologized, “but it’s true.”
The shock of what she said had worn off by the time we emerged on the outside steps an hour later, and in its place was
frustration and despair. None of the other aides we’d met with had been as forthright as her, but behind their doublespeak
was the same message. I looked out at the lines of traffic crawling past, at the limousines idling in the parking lot, and
concluded that if change was what we wanted, then we had to take a different tack.
“We need to work from the bottom up,” I said to Leanne. “We need these people to feel the pressure from the voters.
We need them to understand the real costs of cheap fuel.”
I waited for her answer, for some sort of agreement, but she was too busy wiping her eyes.” (p. 229)
From Being Caribou: Five Months on Foot with an Arctic Herd by Karsten Heuer, now available in bookstores. Reprinted by
permission of McClelland and Stewart Ltd. ឣ
Photo: Karsten Heuer
The Porcupine herd crosses a frozen river.
35
Plummeting Numbers:
The Mysterious Decline of the Arctic
Coast Herds
By John A . Nagy, Senior Biologist
Department of Environment and Natural Resources
Government of the Northwest Territories
out the population trends in the separate herds. These
analyses indicated there were approximately 14,500 adult
Cape Bathurst caribou in 1987, and 17,500 in 1992. The
Bluenose-West herd was estimated at 98,900 adult
caribou in 1987, and 64,700 in 1992. There were not
enough caribou collared to estimate the size of the
Bluenose-East herd during these years.
In the 1960s and 1970s, wildlife biologists thought there
was a single herd of caribou that ranged along the Arctic
Coast between the Mackenzie delta in the west, Kugluktuk
to the east, and south to Great Bear Lake. In 1994,
The first photo-census surveys specifically designed
as part of a ‘Bluenose’ barren-ground caribou herd
to estimate the size of the three herds were done during
management planning and environmental impact assesssummer 2000. The results of these surveys indicated the
ment process, biologists looked back at surveys completed
Cape Bathurst herd had declined from about 17,500 to
between 1966 and 1993 and realized there were three
10,000 adult caribou between 1992 and 2000. However,
calving areas within the range of the ‘Bluenose’ caribou
the caribou were not as well-grouped as in most years
herd. Caribou management has been based on the herd
so it was difficult to estimate their numbers. By 2005
concept, where herds are identified based on their use of
this herd had declined to about
traditional calving grounds.
2,400 adult caribou. The
Applying this approach, biolodecline continued into 2006,
gists in the NWT thought that
when there were about 1,800
there were two, and possibly
adult caribou in the herd.
three, herds within the range
The caribou in some barren-ground caribou
of the ‘Bluenose’ caribou herd.
herds form large groups during late June
The size of the BluenoseSatellite tracking and genetic
West herd dropped from
and early July for insect relief. This behaviour
studies undertaken between
approximately 98,900 to about
1996 and 2006 strongly supprovides biologists with an opportunity to
64,700 in 1992. The estimates
ported the idea there were
accurately count these herds. Caribou in these
of herd size for 1992 and 2000
three herds instead of one. The
were not significantly different,
herds are given radio collars during the winwestern-most herd became
suggesting the population was
known as the Cape Bathurst
ter before the summer when a photocensus is
stable during this period.
herd, after its calving area. The
However, by 2005 this herd was
to be undertaken. The movements of these
herd that calves in Tuktut Nogait
down again to approximately
National Park became known as
collared caribou can then be tracked during
20,800 adult caribou. The
the Bluenose-West. The last
late June and early July. Once the caribou have
decline continued to 2006,
herd, the Bluenose-East, calves
when the herd was estimated at
formed large groups, they are photographed.
in the area of the Rae and
about 18,000 adult caribou.
Richardson rivers between
The caribou in the photographs are counted
Bluenose Lake and Kugluktuk,
The Bluenose-East herd was
and herd size is estimated using the ratio of
in Nunavut.
estimated at 104,000 adult
the number of collared caribou photographed
caribou in 2000, but by 2005
Once biologists realized they
this herd had dropped to
versus
the
number
of
collared
caribou
availwere actually looking at three
68,300 adult caribou. In 2006
herds, they went back over old
able in the herd.
this herd was also down again,
caribou counts to try to work
to about 65,100 adult caribou.
36
Photo: Peary caribou photographed by SD MacDonald. Reproduced with permission of Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa, Canada.
The Hunters and Trappers Committee in Tuktoyaktuk has recommended a two-year ban on hunting the Cape Bathurst herd.
What is driving these alarming drops is not known for sure.
Various factors likely contributed to the decline. Some of
these herds had been near their historic highs for 10 to 15
years during the 1980s and 1990s. We know barrenground caribou populations cycle over a 30-to-40-year
period, so in part the declines may be attributed to this
natural factor. This has been exacerbated by a number of
other events. Between 2000 and 2005 the majority of
cows in the Bluenose-West herd calved during the third
week in June, approximately two weeks later than normal.
Similarly, in the Bluenose-East herd we saw many cows
with one-to-two-week-old calves as late as 17 July 2005,
indicating that these cows are calving in early July. This
is almost one month later than normal. Late calving likely
results in fewer calves surviving to the end of next
summer and into the following spring; the fact that cows
have been calving later than normal for a number of years
suggests they are not getting in good enough condition
to breed in early October. This may be the effect of poorer
food on the summer range, or increased insect harassment during the summer months, or both.
radio-collared cows of the Cape Bathurst and BluenoseWest herds wintered as far south as Colville Lake, NT,
and south of Great Bear Lake, NT, respectively. Based on
the patterns of collared cows in these herds during the
previous seven years, these were unusual movements.
These animals may have been exposed to higher predation rates in their new environments. The stress of
migrating longer distances to calving grounds may have
increased adult and calf mortality.
Hunting may also be taking a toll. Harvest patterns have
changed in many communities during the last 10 years.
In recent years, cows have made up most of the caribou
taken. Removal of cows from a population during
periods when calf survival is low accelerates herd declines.
Continued disturbance resulting from some development
activities coupled with hunting activities may reduce the
body condition of cows on winter ranges. When cows are
in poor condition, their calves are less likely to survive
than when the cows are in good to excellent condition.
In combination, these factors and others are responsible
for the declines of the three coastal herds. Recovery of
these herds will likely require conservative management
over the next 10 to 15 years. ឣ
In fall 2003, the coastal areas from Alaska to Kugluktuk,
Nunavut, experienced icing conditions. Ice on the land
formed a barrier between the caribou and their food. Some
37
The Start of the Pipe: The View from
Tuktoyaktuk
James Pokiak sees the question of declining caribou
populations from at least two perspectives: He is an
indigenous subsistence hunter and also the proprietor
of his own business, Pokiak Guiding and Outfitting,
which caters to hunters from elsewhere. Pokiak lives
on the Arctic coast in Tuktoyaktuk, just east of
the Mackenzie delta. It is in the range of one of the
herds that has undergone the steepest decline of all of
the Northwest Territories’ herds, the Cape Bathurst,
and another herd that has been faltering, the Bluenose
West. It is along this same stretch of coastline that
oil and gas companies are planning to develop gas
fields to feed the proposed Mackenzie Valley pipeline.
James Pokiak spoke with Northern Perspectives editor
Clive Tesar.
How important are the herds to local people?
Very important. It’s been a traditional use for thousands
of years. We’ve always been managing our own species;
providing you only take what you need, it shouldn’t have
such an impact as they’re telling us it has.
What do you think are the reasons for the decline?
I think it’s partly migration changes. There’s not many
bush trappers like there used to be, so there’s not many
trails coming back out of the treeline to the coast. I think
that has a bit to do with it. I spent many years at the
Anderson River area, on my traplines. And on my trapline
trails, there was always caribou that followed my trail. So
if there are no trails off the treeline, depending on the
snow level, then the caribou will just stay where getting
to food is easier for them.
In Tuktoyaktuk, what have you been seeing in terms of
caribou numbers?
There are recommendations being made now to close hunting completely on the Cape Bathurst herd, and to restrict
hunting on the Bluenose herds, what effect would that have?
They do show a big decline, but I think it’s all part of the
natural cycle. I think part of this is that they only count
the caribou every five years. I think if they counted them
every year, they would find that the declines are not as
drastic as they are being painted.
Well, it’s not in law yet, but in Tuk we’ve designated
a couple of areas where there is no limit. On the Tuk
Photo: Peary caribou photographed by SD MacDonald. Reproduced with permission of Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa, Canada.
There is no doubt that wolves are responsible for many caribou kills, but the consensus seems to be that the current declines are being driven by more than predators.
38
there was a herd on the Tuk peninsula. By pressure
from our community, we got ENR to do a survey. The
first year, there was about 60% caribou and the rest
were reindeer; now they say there’s more reindeer, and
nobody knows where the reindeer are coming from.
Dene laws
The Sahtu Renewable Resources Board covers a
region along the Mackenzie River Valley from
What other actions do you think should be taken to help the
caribou recover?
north of Wrigley to the south of the Mackenzie
Delta, and from the Yukon border in the west to
ENR has been trying to persuade us to harvest young
bulls, but the best time to do that is in the fall-time, before
the rut, when they’re healthy and fat. If they want us to
concentrate on harvesting young bulls and stressing that
we should leave the cows alone, then they should provide
some kind of funding for us to access those areas in the
fall. It’s a long ways, a two-day boat ride, or you need an
aircraft, and that’s really expensive. So if they want us to
harvest young bulls, then they need to provide assistance
to the communities so they can access young bulls in
the fall-time.
the Nunavut border in the east. The Board is about
to go on a tour of the five Sahtu communities to
explain what actions the board has recommended
to the ministers. The board has boiled down its
advice to what it calls “Dene laws”.
• Take only what you need
• Harvest fewer cows
On top of the natural decline, you have the prospect of a
potential increase in oil and gas activity. How will that
affect the caribou?
• Monitor harvests
• Reduce wastage
I do have a really big concern regarding that issue. They’re
planning to build some processing facilities in the
middle of prime wintering habitat of the caribou. We had
a meeting with ENR last week regarding the woodland
caribou, where it shows right across Canada, the woodland caribou, like in northern Alberta, the caribou are
avoiding those areas; they don’t go there any more. That
tells me when industrial activity happens, the caribou find
other areas to go to. In the Constance Lake area, they’re
talking about a big project and building an airstrip. We
don’t want to see that airstrip because of the increase of
traffic that will go into that area.
• Educate, educate, educate
As a final point, the board plans to remind people that “With rights come responsibilities.”
peninsula, there is a mixture of reindeer and caribou. And
there is still a small number we can take from the BluenoseWest herd, about 4%. Hopefully that’s what we’ll get, but
that’s got to be distributed across the user groups.
Is there a concern that hunting restrictions will continue?
So what do you want to see happen?
I think there is going to be until the numbers come up
again. People are leery about the levels they can harvest.
We’re really trying to educate our people into looking at
alternative food sources such as moose and muskox. We do
have some muskox and moose in our area, not so many
moose, but we do have access to the areas that they use. The
muskox are far away, but some of us go in the springtime,
and that’s a way for us to make up for the lack of caribou.
We’ve been telling them, rather than build an airstrip,
they should take advantage of the existing airstrips in
Inuvik and Tuk, and help us to build an all-weather road.
The road would have a minimal impact on the herds but
at least they’d be able to cross freely.
But the noise would have a big effect. They tell us that
they would only do that for two or three years until
the production facilities are built. But if you destroy prime
habitat of wintering grounds of the caribou, that will
have a big effect. And we’ve seen with the caribou in
northern Alberta that industrial activity does have a
big effect. ឣ
What options do you have? You spoke of another mixed caribou reindeer population, how long can that sustain people?
That depends on how sustainably people harvest them.
When this whole issue came about, they didn’t even know
39
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The Committee
Chair & Interim Treasurer:
Charles J. Birchall
Vice Chair: Robbie Keith
Past Chair: Alexander Hunter
François Bregha
Okalik Eegeesiak
Rob Huebert
Penny Lipsett
Lois Little
Jennifer Mauro
Ben McDonald
This edition of Northern Perspectives was edited by Clive Tesar.
Back issues of Northern Perspectives may be obtained from the CARC
Ottawa office at a cost of $20 each.
ISSN: 0380-5522