Barren Ground Caribou Caribou in Decline

7/27/2019 Barren Ground Caribou Caribou in Decline

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Caribou in decline

Barren ground caribou herds fluctuate naturally over 30-to-

40-year cycles, but aboriginal groups and government

wildlife managers fear that increasing human pressures and

a warming climate are accelerating their current decline.

CANADIAN G EOG RAPHIC 57

Can the Bathurst caribou herd then 250,000 animalsstrong survive this level of human pressure?

Fifteen years later, that baby is a teenager eager to huntcaribou with his father and the herd is almost halved in size,to an estimated 128,000. And the question of the cariboussurvival rings louder than ever. The answer, according to theNorthwest Territories government, is no.

More than 4.4 millionwild caribou roam the planet.Three million of them are in North America, makingthem the most abundant large mammal in the northernreaches of the continent. But dont let the lofty numbersfool you. They are found in the most bruta lly cold climesof every province and territory north and west ofNewfoundland, from the boreal forest and cordillera to theHigh Arctic and Alaska, yet they are feeling the heat, so tospeak. According to the Committee on the Status ofEndangered Wildlife in Canada, 7 of t he 12 caribou pop-ulations on the continent are either threatened, endangeredor of special concern. There are still some migratory herdson the Arctic Barrens and forest-tundra areas of Quebecand Labrador that are not on conservation lists, but the

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My oldest son was a babe in arms when the barrenground caribou (Rangifer tarandus groenlandicus) migratedfarther south and west than usual, arriving unhurried andunannounced at our frozen lake near Yellowknife. First insmall groups, then swelling into hundreds, then thousands,their leggy, silver-brown bodies moved like puffs of campfiresmoke in the morning fog, their sharp-edged hoofs carvinginto ice like teeth into a snow cone.

Perhaps it is the caribous giving nature some aborig-inal people credit their very existence to the abundant char-ity of the herds, believing caribou offer themselves for food,shelter and clothing in return for respect perhaps they didnot know to distrust us, but as we stood awestruck amongthem, they soldiered past with minimal wariness, unfazed aswell by the steady crack of gunfire nearby.

I live on a ragged highway that winds for 60 kilometresnortheast of the territorial capital, through the spindlyspruce and pine of subarctic boreal forest and the tradi-tional Akaitcho Territory of the Weledeh YellowknivesDene. In October 1992, an unprecedented number ofhunters in pickup trucks and snowmobiles flocked downthat road to the frozen killing fields. And I wondered, PA

ULNICKLEN/NGSIMAGECOLLECTION

Whats causing the rapid collapse of caribou herds humans,climate change or natural cycles? BY LAURIE SARKADI

largest herd in the Northwest Territories the Bathurst has declined by 74 percent in the past 20 years, puttingthe caribou in the eye of a brewing dispute among aborig-inal leaders, the territorial government and outfitters over

what, if any, action should be taken.All things being equal, aboriginal knowledge and science

concur that migratory herds have natural boom-and-bustcycles spanning roughly 30 to 40 years, likely because oflong-term climate patterns. The last time caribou werescarce was in the late 1970s, when people hunted with dogteams and low-powered snowmobiles. There were nooutfitters, few aircraft and roads, and caribou didnt wearsatellite collars allowing their movements to be tracked onthe internet (a service for hunters that the territorial govern-ment revoked this year out of conservation concerns).

Last time when caribou were low, it was a lot harder forpeople to find them, and the harvest levels declined naturally,Susan Fleck, director of wildlife for the Northwest Territoriesgovernment, reported at a caribou-management hearing lastspring. We dont think thats the situation today.

With climate change, diamond mines, ice roads, oil andgas exploration, a pending pipeline, 10 licensed outfitters and

more people, all things are no longer equal for migratoryherds in the Northwest Territories.

Meanwhile, their sedentary and shy woodland cousins tothe south, living in the ever-shrinking boreal forest, were des-ignated threatened in 2004. The fate of the boreal woodlandcaribou (R. t. caribou) population could become a flash-point of credibility for the federal Species at Risk Act, whichhas yet to release a national caribou-recovery plan (one isexpected in the spring of 2008), let alone manoeuvre throughthe political powder keg of legislating conservation areas tokeep out logging, mining and other development.

In Ontario, half of the historic woodland caribou rangewas lost to logging and urban and industrial developmentin a consistent northward march of 34 kilometres per decadebetween 1880 and 1990, according to biologist JamesSchaefer of Trent University in Peterborough, Ont. Withoutconcerted efforts to protect their habitat, Ontarios borealcaribou seem destined for the same fate as caribou that his-torically roamed Europe and eastern North America.

Another population in peril is t he worlds la st 1,900mountain caribou, the unique ecotype of woodland cariboubattling to survive in the diminishing forests of central and

Wildlifestoriesof the year


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CANADIAN G EOG RAPHIC 59

Before there were trading posts or Wal-Marts, caribou pro-vided food, clothing, shelter, tools, weapons, thread, sleds,drums and even baby soothers and menstrual pads for thepeople with whom they shared the land. Archaeologistsdate this relationship back 8,000 years in places such as theeco-rich Thelon River Basin, straddling the N.W.T.-Nunavutborder. Until the last century, the Etthen-eldeli-dene, orCaribou Eaters, were so influenced by the seasonal migra-tion that almost all their births took place nine monthsafter herds were interceptedat summer water crossingson the tundra. Today, cari-bou remains the primarysource of protein for mostaboriginal people in theNorthwest Territories, where 72 percent of households eatmeat and fish obtained through hunting and fishing.

James Pokiak is a hunter and an outfitter in the oil-richcoastal community of Tuktoyaktuk, home to the Inuvialuit,or western Arctic Inuit. He says the average family of five con-sumes 20 to 25 caribou a year, meat that is not easily replacedin a community where a package of bacon costs $17 (see The1,000-mile diet, page 76). He voluntarily reduced his huntto two this year. In 2005, he lost all his caribou guiding busi-ness after his game council and the territorial governmentbanned tourists from hunting the herd in steepest decline, theCape Bathurst. Photo-census surveys estimate the herd hasdropped from 17,500 adults in 1992 to just 1,800 last year.

It may be a natural low cycle, says Pokiak. There are

some people in my community who are seeing this with thecaribou for their third time. But he doesnt discount the pos-sibility that oil and gas exploration has driven the caribouaway or that the proposed natural-gas pipeline courted by hisInuvialuit leaders could make matters worse. Their allegianceseems to be more with big oil than the caribou, he says.

Aboriginal people want indeed, their bodies need caribou meat. But they also need jobs to buy the $1.45-a-litregasoline required to go hunting. So when big oil and mining

companies come a-knocking in caribou country, there hasntbeen the political, or popular, will to close the door.

There are now four diamond mines in the Bathurst range,with no end in sight. In 2004 alone, more than two millionhectares of mineral claims were staked in the NorthwestTerritories. But the jury is still out as to whether the minesare affecting herd size, says caribou biologist Anne Gunn, whoretired from the territorial government last year. Cumulativeeffects are unknown. At an individual level, some caribou, par-ticularly cows and calves, are avoiding the mines, possiblybecause of dust. A study conducted by University of Albertascientists for the Diavik Diamond Mine shows airborne pol-lutants from mine operations, such as ammonia and nitrate,are settling on the lichens on which caribou feed. MA

PS:STEVENFICK/CANADIANGEOGRAPHIC;SOURCES:BATHURSTHERDRANGES:CANADIANWILDLIFESERVICE;SUBSPECIES:B.ULVEVADETANDK.KLOKOV(EDS.),

FAMILY-BASEDREINDEERHERDINGANDHUNTINGECONOMIES,ANDTHESTATUS

ANDMANAGEMENTOFWILDREINDEER/CARIBOUPOPULATIONS,2004

southeastern British Columbia. A glimmer of hope appearedon October 16, when the B.C. government announced amountain caribou recovery implementation plan to rebuildthe endangered herds, including protecting 2.2 millionhectares from logging and road building and, more contro-versially, culling some of the caribous predators.

Perhaps even closer to the brink is the smaller snow-white Peary caribou (R. t. pearyi) of Canadas High Arcticislands. Changing weather conditions, including ice cover-ing the grasses and sedges the caribou eat, along with wolfpredation and continued hunting by Inuit, are blamed foran 84 percent decline in the population since the 1960s.Inuit who depend on the herds in these northern extremes

dispute federal numbers. They resent Environment MinisterJohn Bairds plan to list the Peary as endangered as well asthe Nunavut governments suggested hunting quotas, insist-ing they are successfully managing the herd using their inti-mate knowledge of the natural world passed down throughmillennia. For them, part of conserving wildlife is harvest-ing it. And therein lies the dilemma.

For the indigenous people in Canada whose ancestraldependency on the herds dates back thousands of years some of whom call themselves Caribou People to nothunt and eat caribou would mean losing a huge part oftheir identity.

We are descendants of the caribou, says DannyBeaulieu, a Northwest Territories wildlife officer in

Yellowknife, as he recounts the creation story passed downto him from his Chipewyan grandmother. A bull caribouleading his herd off the tundra into t he treeline for the fallturns into a man who helps a starving widow and her twodaughters repopulate and feed their decimated village.Beaulieus grandmother told him of hard times when the

caribou were scarce, around the First World War, and how,when the herds were strong again in the mid-1920s, theirmigration sounded like thunder. The Chipewyan wordfor caribou etthen also means star, a reflection ofcelestial reverence for an animal they believe came from thestars, bridging the fine line between life, starvation and thespirit world.

ARCTIC CIRCLE

Thelon

WildlifeSanctuary

YELLOWKNIFE

Rae Lakes

Wha Ti

Wekwet

Cambridge Bay

Kugluktuk

Umingmaktok

Proposedport

Proposed all-season road

Winterroad

Bathurst Inlet

N.W.T.

NUNAVUT

Snap Lake

DiavikEkati

Jericho

Diamond mine

Annual range

Summer range

Calving grounds

Bathurst caribou herd

0 100 200 km

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Seven caribou populations on the continent arethreatened, endangered or of special concern.

PAULNICKLEN/NGSIMAGECOLLECTION

Some three million caribou comprising

four subspecies barren ground (OPPO-

SITE), woodland, Grants and Peary

range across the continents northern

reaches (LEFT). The Bathurst barren

ground herd (ABOVE) is about half the

size it was 15 years ago.

Enlargedarea

Peary(R. t. pearyi)

Barren ground(R. t. groenlandicus)

Woodland(R. t. caribou)

Grants(R. t. granti)

Peary/barren ground(R. t. pearyi/groenlandicus)

Subspecies of caribou (Rangifer tarandus)


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Theres a change in the chemical composition of lichens,says Gunn. We dont know what the change means to thecaribou, but certainly the elders see it as a huge concern.

Under strict environmental agreements, the mine com-panies are required to monitor all caribou activity. They haveerected lines of inuksuit (rock structures resembling people)to discourage caribou fromentering their properties.They keep their boundariesporous by using very littlefencing, so animals that do

wander in can also wanderout. Wildlife always has the right-of-way, and some truck-ing is halted during the migration.

The 570-kilometre winter ice road that supplies themines from January to March is getting a lot of attention(see Diamond alley, page 90). Where the patchy pave-ment past my house abruptly ends, the winter road begins.A two-lane highway runs over frozen lakes, past the tree-line and across the Barrens. Some 11,000 truckloads offuel, cement and freight wound their way through theBathurst caribou range this year, paving the way for any-

one with a pickup truck and a rifle. Aboriginal leaders havebeen cool so far to a territorial government proposal to banhunting along all winter roads, although it is a measurethey are considering.

Paradoxically, the winter road to the diamondmines was closed early in 2006 after warm weather made theice unstable, forcing the mines to fly in diesel fuel to keepoperating. The warm weather is renewing interest in build-ing a deep-sea port and an all-weather road in BathurstInlet, Nunavut, as an alternative supply route (see The

road to Bathurst Inlet, CGMarch/April 2004). This isalso where the Bathurst herd goes to calve.

Longer summers on the tundra also mean an increase inharassing insects. Caribou twitch and huddle together frommosquitoes or run in panic from warble flies, which causesstress and reduces their ability to feed their calves, gain fatand multiply. Heavier snowfalls keep them from reaching thelichens that sustain them during the dark, cold months ofwinter and they starve.

So, what to do about it all?

On the global-warming front, theres little Canada can doin the immediate sense to cool down the planet in time tothwart a caribou crisis. Between 1996 and 2001, during thenorthern diamond rush, greenhouse-gas emissions in the GL

ENANDREBE

CCAGRAMBO


The average family of five consumes 20 to 25caribou a year, meat that is not easily replaced.

A migrating barren ground caribou

with an impressive rack of antlers and a

mottled coat jogs across the tundra. As

climate change brings longer summers

to Arctic regions, it also brings more

insects and thus more stress to caribou.


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Northwest Territories increased by 60 percent. The territo-rial government estimates those levels will double or triplewithin the next 7 to 10 years, depending on the pace of con-struction on the proposed Mackenzie Gas Project, whichincludes a pipeline through woodland caribou territory.

Killing off predators such as wolves and grizzlies is a con-troversial prospect, one the government says is costly andlargely redundant, since those animals tend to fluctuatewith caribou herd sizes anyway.

Which leaves only one quick-fix conservation measure:restrict hunting. Currently, an estimated 11,000 caribou are

killed annually across all herds in the Northwest Territories.In October, the Tuktoyaktuk Hunters and TrappersCommittee took the unprecedented step of imposing acomplete ban on hunting in some parts of the range of thedeclining Bluenose Herd. For the first time, Inuvialuithunters will also be issued tags and be required to report allharvests in other areas.

For now, such measures are still staunchly opposed in mostDene communities, where they are seen as a threat to the con-stitutionally entrenched aboriginal right to hunt. But Deneleaders support reducing the number of caribou that resident

non-aboriginals can take each year to two, down from five, andonly bulls. In my family, this still feels like an abundance.Many aboriginal leaders believe that commercial outfitters,

even though they employ local people and donate much of

their meat to communities, should have the fewest harvest-ing privileges, particularly trophy hunters who seek theregal velvet-covered antlers of large bull leaders. The newlyformed Tli Cho Government, based in Behchoko, N.W.T.,and representing about 3,500 Dene from four communities,

has recommended that commercial outfitting be eliminatedaltogether until the herd recovers. When the territorialgovernment reduced outfitter tags to 750 caribou this sea-son, down from 1,260 last year, an American owner, JohnAndre, launched a class-action lawsuit against the govern-ment, calling its concerns over a declining Bathurst herd an

environmental hoax.Many aboriginal hunters

are also skeptical of themethods used to count herds mainly aerial-survey pho-tographs of cows and calves

at calving grounds but there is general consensus that thenumbers are down. Radio and satellite collars that allow biol-ogists to track herd movement and delineate individualherds were strongly opposed by Dene elders when theywere introduced in 1996. Elders worried that the collarswould irritate and ostracize the animals, but mostly theythought it highly disrespectful not to take a caribou thatoffers itself to you, even if a biologist has to shoot a net andjump out of a helicopter to get it. Today, with the passingof each elder and the growing pressures on Dene culture which suffered immeasurably when children were torn from

their parents to board at government- and church-run res-idential schools, where they were literally beaten for speak-ing their language or practising Dene ways some of thatspiritual attachment is waning. PA

ULNICKLEN/NGSIMAGECOLLECTION

The largest herd in the Northwest Territorieshas declined by 74 percent in the past 20 years.


A port and a new road are planned for

Bathurst Inlet, Nunavut, within the

Bathurst caribou herds calving grounds.


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Diamonds under the soles of their hoofs

You cant miss it. A gigantic flat-top mountain of waste rock rises out of the rolling tundra of theNorthwest Territories. Up close, it stretches more than 20 storeys high and obscures the sky inthe windows of the bus that shuttles workers from the airstrip to the main complex of the Diavik

Diamond Mine, a seven-square-kilometre engineering marvel built on an island 110 kilometres north

of the treeline. To reach the black diamond-bearing kimberlite below, the granite has been dug out of

the lake bed of Lac de Gras, no less, its waters held back by a massive dike. Welcome to the once

pristine Barrens, part of the migration route of the Bathurst caribou herd and now home to a massive

diamond play.

There are four operating diamond mines in the region. When the Diavik mine closes sometime

in the next 18 years, all structures will be trucked out or buried, the dike breached, and the waste

rock now being engineered to minimize the potential for acid-rock drainage will have its

steep inclines graded to let the caribou pass freely again.

Weve committed to putting in large caribou ramps so the caribou can go up and down [the

waste rock piles], says Scott Wytrychowski, Diaviks environmental manager. The waste rock will

slope downward, and the position of the ramps will be decided by Dene and Inuit, who are more

familiar with caribou movements. Should they be straight or swerving, on the south side or the

east side theyll help us decide those details.

The nearby Ekati Diamond Mine (LEFT) has three waste-rock piles and may add another two overthe next couple of years. It has also worked with elders to make a 30-kilometre road more caribou-

friendly, particularly at places identified as migration trails, by smoothing down steep sides and

adding fine crushed stone so the animals hoofs do not get caught in the rock. L.S.


To comment, e-mail [email protected] www.canadiangeographic.ca/web/nd07.

CG

Caribou were once revered and used wholly. Nowaboriginal leaders are beginning to acknowledge the shame-

ful and illegal practice of meat wastage a crime thatknows no ethnic boundaries. One day, I saw a well-knownelder walking along the ice road with a knife, salvaging thehearts and other wasted organs and meat from caribou lefton the roadside by irresponsible hunters.

I grew up with the Dene law, and I was told if Im notrespectful to the caribou, something bad will happen tothe caribou, says Fred Sangris, chief of the Yellowknives ofAkaitcho. But the younger generation does not know that.If the caribou disappear, he says, so, too, will Dene songsabout them, pounded out on drums made of caribou skin.We might be singing about polyethylene.

A self-professed Caribou Dundee, Sangris heads a work-ing committee of chiefs developing its own managementaction plan for the Bathurst herd and supports new publicschool curricula reintroducing traditional teachings. Mythree sons, shoulder to shoulder with Dene schoolmates, aretaught about caribou ecology, that meat must not be usedfor personal gain and that caribou communicate with oneanother other over great distances to organize themselves forlong migrations.

Sangris wants to discuss the possibility of organizingexperienced hunters to follow Bathurst caribou for a year to

simply observe and report on their movements and numbers.Thats been done recently, but not by an aboriginal hunter.

In his enlightening bookBeing Caribou, biologist KarstenHeuer chronicled five months on foot with his wife Leanne

Allison following the Porcupine caribou herd (R. t. granti)to its summer calving grounds in Alaska (see BeingCaribou, CGMarch/April 2006).

Before Heuer set out, a Gwichin man told him thatwhen they used to follow the herd, people could talk to cari-bou, and caribou could talk to people. The commentunravelled its meaning to Heuer only after months of rhyth-mic movement with the herd. He detected a deep sound hecalled thrumming, some resonance on the edge of humanhearing, humming an oscillating song, that disappeared asquickly as it made itself present to him.

For the vast majority of Canadians who will never see acaribou, except on a quarter, perhaps this is whats at stake.It is increasingly difficult for anyone to reduce this techno-logically crazed existence to the bare bones of natural har-monies to hear, as Sufi poet Rumi calls it, the voice thatdoesnt use words. Yet if we believe those voices exist,whether we hear them or not, with each one we let slip away,our world will become that much less of a symphony.

Laurie Sarkadi is a writer and broadcaster living nearYellowknife.

LAURIESARKADI

Barren Ground Caribou Caribou in Decline

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