MONITORING MOVES FURTHER INTO THE RANGE
With plans to collect information from hunters in Tadoule Lake, Manitoba, and strong interest in community-based caribou monitoring from northern Saskatchewan communities and the Athabasca Land Use Planning Interim Advisory Panel (ALUP), the BQCMB’s caribou monitoring project is making tracks from its Nunavut base camp into much of the range.
The project studies caribou, caribou range and community use in relation to climate change and land use activities. Since 2000, 80 interviews have been conducted with hunters and 16 interviews with elders – some of whom still hunt – in Arviat and Baker Lake. The long-term monitoring program will provide local and traditional knowledge to complement science-based monitoring taking place across the caribou range.
The fourth jurisdiction through which Beverly and Qamanirjuaq caribou herds range, the Northwest Territories, has a community-based caribou monitoring program in Lutselk’e that began before the BQCMB project.
Information will possibly be shared between the two like-minded monitoring ventures. Hunters and Trappers Organizations (HTOs) in Arviat and Baker Lake fully back the BQCMB’s community-based monitoring approach, and have aided the process by helping to improve interview questions, choosing caribou monitors to conduct the interviews, and identifying hunters and elders to be interviewed.
They’ve also made important suggestions that project organizers have incorporated into the interview methods used.
With several years under its belt, the project is now being evaluated to make sure research techniques are the best they can be, and that the results are useful to communities, the BQCMB, and agencies that manage Beverly and Qamanirjuaq caribou herds and their habitats.
The Manitoba advantage
An efficient method for obtaining perspectives of hunters in one community in northern Manitoba may go ahead later this year, thanks to Manitoba community representative Albert Thorassie and an initial $5,000 in funding from the BQCMB. Thorassie already regularly collects harvest data from hunters in his community of Tadoule Lake on behalf of Manitoba Conservation. He suggested at the board’s May meeting that he could ask hunters for their observations of caribou and changes on the range at the same time. Caribou monitoring project co-ordinator Leslie Wakelyn and community liaison Anne Kendrick will help Thorassie draft a list of questions for hunters to answer three times a year. Hunters will submit their answers to Thorassie, who will in turn screen them for accuracy and completeness, and pass them on to the monitoring project co-ordinators.
Good timing for Saskatchewan
BQCMB members from Saskatchewan communities have already requested monitoring in their area, and the board’s May meeting in Fond du Lac gave Kendrick a chance to spend a few days in Black Lake beforehand, speaking with several elders to gauge their initial reaction to the project’s approach. As a result, a number of elders came to the Fond du Lac meeting.
“They were very positive about the thought of the project happening,” said Kendrick, who will be making a presentation at the mid-August Dene Gathering in Black Lake to give residents more information. Customizing community-based monitoring to each region’s circumstances is pivotal to success, she underlines. Over the next few months, she will be asking communities how much responsibility they’re able to take on “so that we’re not building something that is just an absolute burden for people who are already involved in a lot of treaty entitlement work.”
At the BQCMB’s meeting, ALUP co-ordinator Diane McDonald said the ALUP’s steering committee supported community-based caribou monitoring by the BQCMB, even though it would be happening outside of a proposed management structure for the Athabasca Region. She reasoned that it could complement wildlife responsibilities of the proposed management structure, and if successful, eventually be incorporated by it. Community-based caribou monitoring “will tie in nicely” with the goals of the ALUP, echoed the Panel’s Simon Kearney, especially since “the number one species of concern up there is caribou.”
The earliest that the BQCMB could begin monitoring in the Athabasca region would be spring 2004, once funds are raised and the project evaluation completed.
Evaluation keeps work on results-oriented path
Wakelyn and Kendrick are conducting an evaluation of the monitoring project, an exercise requested at the November 2002 board meeting by BQCMB government representatives. Assistance will be requested from the Arctic Borderlands Ecological Knowledge Co-op, the monitoring program that began about eight years ago on the range of the Porcupine Caribou – and upon which the BQCMB’s program is modelled. Wakelyn said that Borderland Co-op co-ordinator Joan Eamer has revised and improved the BQCMB’s monitoring database. Eamer, along with Co-op team members Gary Kofinas and Don Russell, will be asked to help assess the questions and techniques being used to determine if the approach is indeed extracting information that people find useful.
The evaluation, funded jointly by the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board and the BQCMB, will provide board members with the initial results of the assessment at the BQCMB’s November meeting. That should spur feedback from board members about specific aspects of the program, leading to a final evaluation report with recommendations by January 2004.
AROUND THE RANGE
Milestone for Athabasca
An interim plan for the most critical area of land use in Saskatchewan’s Athabasca region, the 25-kilometre corridor along both sides of the road from Points North to Fond du Lac, was to go to members of the Athabasca Land Use Planning Interim Advisory Panel at the end of July for approval. This is Stage One of a three-stage plan to better manage the Athabasca region’s fish, wildlife and land resources. The risk of Beverly caribou migrating near this road has concerned the Panel, since the road has opened up the area to southern hunters with treaty rights. A final version of the plan is due out March 2004.
Toxic mine worries northerners
Indian and Northern Affairs Canada moved to erect a fence this summer and fall at the abandoned Colomac Mine 200 kilometres north of Rae, NWT after Dogrib elders voiced their fears about caribou seen eating tailings at the former gold mine. The water in the tailings containment area has toxic cyanide, ammonia and metals in it.
Fears about contaminated mines harming caribou exist elsewhere in the North, too. Last November, BQCMB community representatives urged that all jurisdictions explore tools such as fencing to prevent caribou from entering mine sites, since contaminated caribou meat is a health risk to everyone living on the caribou range. Northern Saskatchewan is a prime example. Close to 50 uranium mines and refineries have operated since the 1940s, and some are still operating. Today residents – and caribou – are faced with a web of radioactive waste sites.
2004 Caribou Scholarship
Early birds, take note: the deadline for 2004 Beverly and Qamanirjuaq Caribou Management Scholarship Fund applications is Jan. 31, 2004, and there will be a single award of $1,500. For more details, contact the Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies. Tel.: (613) 562-0515, fax: (613) 562-0533, web site: www.cyberus.ca/~acuns
BQCMB meetings
Winnipeg is the regular host city for BQCMB November meetings, and this next one, slated for Nov. 14 – 16, 2003, is no exception. The board will then make its first-ever appearance in Hay River, NWT for the spring meeting scheduled for May 28 – 30, 2004.
ELDERS RECORD THEIR CARIBOU MEMORIES
So much change in so little time.
That was obvious during interviews in May with Baker Lake and Arviat elders who were questioned about their decades of knowledge surrounding the effects of change on caribou and their habitat, and the way shifting weather patterns affect the health of caribou herds and hunting. Anne Kendrick, BQCMB community liaison, and translators Betsy Aksawnee of Baker Lake and Frank Nutarasungnik of Arviat conducted the interviews. The elders, some of whom still hunt, included four women and 12 men. The findings of the project – a partnership with the University of Alaska Fairbanks / Institute of Arctic Biology – will contribute to the BQCMB’s community-based caribou monitoring project.
One of the greatest changes in the North is on the scale of hardships. These days, picking up supplies of sugar and tea involves a quick five-minute walk to the grocery store. But for some of the elders interviewed, who ranged in age from 65 to 80, picking up supplies in the days before communities existed in the Kivalliq Region meant a six-week dogsled trip from Ennadai to Yellowknife – a journey of more than 700 kilometres one way – or a slightly shorter trip from Ennadai to Churchill.
Nor will young people these days face starvation, as their grandparents did, if the caribou change their migratory routes. One elder interviewed survived the terrible famine of the 1950s, when caribou veered away from their traditional routes in the Arctic barrenlands, and many people from the Ennadai and Back River areas died.
Many Baker Lake elders had spent some of their early years near the lower Kazan River, site of the Fall Caribou Crossing National Historic Site. They spoke of their travels, as well as the ban on travel and hunting in the Thelon Game Sanctuary, established in 1927.
“People mentioned it in a matter-of-fact way,” without resentment, says Kendrick.
As for changes in caribou over the decades, elders haven’t really seen major differences in the routes caribou have travelled, but “people did talk about the difference in behaviour in caribou,” says Kendrick. Over and over, people repeated that in the past, “even the smell of a human footprint would be enough to deflect a caribou.” Caribou aren’t nearly as skittish today.
Interviews were conducted using a specially designed questionnaire and maps, and were recorded on audio cassette and videotape. Information from the questionnaire and maps will be entered into a database similar to the one used for interviews of hunters. Summaries of the results of the elders’ interviews will go first to the elders and the HTOs in Baker Lake and Arviat for verification, before being presented to the BQCMB. Copies of the audio and video recordings will go to the HTOs, the BQCMB and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. It has been agreed that the videos lodged with the BQCMB and the University of Alaska Fairbanks can only be shown to others after first obtaining permission from the HTOs.
Elders recalled the terrible caribou famine of half a century ago. This photo of a Padleimiut man with a caribou carcass was taken in 1949 – Photo by Richard Harrington, courtesy of Public Archives Canada
MAD COW WOES COULD HURT SPORTS HUNT
One mad cow in Alberta could lead to a bad caribou sports hunting season for northern Canada this year.
That’s because the United States banned the import of all ruminant animals and meat products May 20 after one cow in Alberta tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or “mad cow” disease. A ruminant is a hoofed animal with a compartmentalized stomach that chews food regurgitated from the first stomach – like cattle, or caribou.
Nunavut’s caribou sports hunt alone is valued at about $750,000, of which $500,000 stays in the territory. In the NWT, the annual caribou sports hunt rings up a whopping $12.8 million, with about 900 hunters tracking caribou each year. Nunavut’s muskox sports hunt, valued at about $480,000 with 120 licensed hunts last year, will also suffer under the U.S. ban.
“If the ban is not lifted, those hunters will cancel or go somewhere else,” Simon Awa, assistant deputy minister of Nunavut’s Department of Sustainable Development, told Caribou News in Brief. In May, Nunavut Premier Paul Okalik called on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to lobby for Nunavut caribou and muskox to be exempted from the U.S. ban.
The ban has already hit the Rankin Inlet-based meat processing firm Kivalliq Arctic Foods. A $34,000 shipment of caribou meat bound for the States has been stuck in a freezer since the ban was imposed. Most of Nunavut’s $400,000 caribou meat industry is generated by the annual commercial harvest on Southampton Island and subsequent sale of meat products from Kivalliq Arctic Foods.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is not lifting the ban because of pressure from its trading partners, notably Japan. Japan will not allow the importation of American beef if there is any possibility that it could also include Canadian beef. In July, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien began discussions with Japan to convince it that Canadian beef is safe. Canada exports about 60 per cent of its annual production of beef and live cattle.
A $460 million compensation package for the cattle industry was announced by the federal government, but that won’t help most northerners. Awa says if the U.S. ban drags on into September, Nunavut will have to be included in the compensation package.
“If you look at the whole BSE issue, the issue in Nunavut is minuscule compared to the beef issue,” says Awa. But the revenues lost are a “big part of our economy.”
DENE TO DEBATE SATELLITE COLLARING
The sensitive issue of satellite collaring several Beverly caribou was to be discussed at mid- August’s Dene Gathering in Black Lake.
Last year, the BQCMB agreed in principle that satellite collars on select caribou would be a prerequisite to any population survey. The Beverly and Qamanirjuaq herds were last counted in 1994, and the Beverly herd is thought to be close to its sustainable harvest limit – if it hasn’t already passed it.
A small number of Qamanirjuaq caribou have worn satellite collars since 1993, when the government of the Northwest Territories launched the project to broadly monitor the movements of the herd. The Beverly herd has never been collared. Elders in northern Saskatchewan strongly oppose the idea.
Others in Saskatchewan, though, would welcome it. BQCMB alternate member Pierre Robillard of Black Lake supports satellite collaring “100 per cent” and planned to speak in favour of it at the Dene Gathering. He says young people from Black Lake and Fond du Lac are behind him.
“It’s a really important issue for the generation down the road,” says Robillard. Times are different now, with fewer young people living on the land. “We never live like old days no more.”
Another alternate member, Joe Martin of Fond du Lac, points out that communities are spending lots of money on charter flights to search for the caribou that are staying further away these days because of forest fire burns. “We went out about three times last year,” Martin says, at an estimated cost of about $1,500 per charter.
At the other end of the Beverly herd range, Baker Lake residents would like satellite collaring on the Beverly herd. BQCMB member David Aksawnee, president of the Baker Lake HTO, says his HTO discussed the matter prior to the BQCMB’s May meeting, and it’s come up at a recent meeting of the Kivalliq Wildlife Board.
“It’s been a few years since the study has been done for the Beverly herd and up to now, when I try to apply for commercial tags, I get turned down because there’s no recent study completed on that area,” says Aksawnee.
Questions from elders
At the BQCMB’s Fond du Lac meeting, elders wanted to see examples of the new lightweight satellite collars programmed to fall off after two years. They also quizzed Manitoba community representatives Jerome Denechezhe and Albert Thorassie about their experience with collaring on the Qamanirjuaq herd. The two board members explained that while their communities were initially against collaring, they now saw the advantages in the location data obtained by satellite collars. Another board member, August Enzoe of Lutselk’e, has also seen his community benefit from satellite collars placed on Bathurst caribou in recent years.
Both Martin and Robillard say many older people oppose satellite collaring because of a legendary incident that took place several hundred years ago in the Athabasca region. As the caribou were starting their spring journey north, some people tied straps onto the antlers of certain caribou to identify them as their own. That fall, there were no caribou. A family that travelled north to search for the missing caribou discovered those wearing the straps refused to cross a channel of water until they were chased into doing so.
“The caribou never come back in Lake Athabasca at least about 15 years,” says Robillard. Martin notes that a few elders support satellite collaring, however. “I think that, for myself, it’s better to put a satellite collar on because then we’ll know where the caribous are. If people want to go hunting, they’ll know where they are.”
NEW FIREFIGHTING POLICY FIZZLES
Saskatchewan’s revised Forest Fire Suppression Priorities have been greeted with major disappointment in sparsely populated northern Saskatchewan, where the province rates the lowest values-at-risk designations.
The new policy combats fire and forest insects and diseases using an ecosystem-based management system. The old policy didn’t deal with forest insect and disease management, nor did it acknowledge newer beliefs about the beneficial role in forest ecosystems of natural and prescribed fire, insect activity and forest diseases. In the new revised policy, the government gives human life and safety the highest priority in its values-at-risk approach.
But in northern Saskatchewan – where people survive on caribou as a main source of food – fires are equally as devastating. Jerome Denechezhe of Manitoba, who has been a member of the BQCMB since 1982, noted that even though the board has been discussing fire suppression for more than 20 years, Saskatchewan’s new policy still does not address the issue of fire suppression in northern areas where fires wipe out livelihoods such as trapping, and destroy caribou range.
“The caribou food is all burnt. That’s why the caribou don’t come down,” says BQCMB Saskatchewan alternate member Joe Martin who urged, along with BQCMB member Arthur Beck of Hay River, NWT, that letters be sent to all jurisdictions calling for greater protection of the caribou range than the Saskatchewan fire-fighting policy has given it. Although rainy weather this year has staved off fires, Saskatchewan experienced seven of its hottest years ever in the 1990s, resulting in more forest fires.
Martin says that fire-ravaged land is stopping the caribou from coming as close to his community, Fond du Lac, as they used to. “They probably come down to 60 miles from Fond du Lac. Before they used to come right down, down close, about 20 or 30 miles.” The sight of scorched earth runs north into the NWT, says Martin, who witnessed the devastation firsthand last year while aboard a charter plane searching for caribou.
Martin says more protection is needed north of the Saskatchewan border, too, because in the Northwest Territories, “they don’t bother to fight when fires start burning. . . . We need more support from the Northwest government with the fire.”
Northerners are unhappy with Saskatchewan’s new forest firefighting policy, because it gives the sparsely populated region the lowest priority when it comes to battling flames – Photo by Saskatchewan Environment
BQCMB SCHOLARSHIP WINNERS
Crime-solving forensic scientists and this year’s winners of the Caribou Management Scholarship have much in common. Both take clues from the scene of the action to build a picture of what happened, and both find valuable information in flesh and blood itself.
University of Alberta PhD student Keri Zittlau, a previous award winner, continues to analyze miscrosatellite DNA to figure out the range boundaries of various caribou herds, including the Beverly and Qamanirjuaq. (DNA is the chemical in humans and animals that decides what they will look and be like. Microsatellites are short DNA sequences that reveal extensive genetic differences between individuals and populations.)
Caribou migrate over huge distances, so it’s hard to pinpoint their range boundaries. But it’s important to know where migration routes are so that resource development doesn’t interfere with caribou movements, and suitable harvest levels are assigned to each herd.
Meanwhile, University of British Columbia PhD student Rebecca Zalatan will use clues from plant life on the range of the Bathurst caribou herd to paint a picture of past caribou population cycles and how climate changes affected the herds. Caribou hoof scars left on spruce roots across caribou trails provide an idea of the number of caribou in that area, while the number of yearly growth rings in the spruce trees provides a time frame, and the width of the ring itself tells us what the weather was like. Hoof scars result when caribou stop to eat the lichen off the spruce roots. The scars are preserved in the actual tree ring. Zalatan has found scars that date back 200 years.
Another clue to past caribou populations and the climate of the day is white mountain heather and the impact of caribou grazing upon it. Scientists measure the distance on the plant stem between leaves to understand what climate was like. All of this evidence combined will help Zalatan in her ultimate goal: “I’d like to see if there’s some sort of large-scale climatic pattern related to the movement of caribou.” She and NWT biologist Anne Gunn hope to combine Zalatan’s findings with traditional knowledge about past caribou populations to see how the information all matches up.
FEDS PITCHED AGAIN ON NUNAVUT-MANITOBA ROAD
A response from Indian and Northern Affairs (INAC) to a revised application for federal funding to study route selection for a possible Manitoba-Nunavut road was expected before the end of July.
The proposal, submitted by the Kivalliq Inuit Association (KIA) in early July to INAC’s Resource Partnerships Program, calls for $500,000 in federal dollars to top up the $500,000 contribution split equally between the governments of Manitoba and Nunavut, and a maximum $100,000 contribution from the KIA. A proposal for route selection work submitted in the summer of 2002 was rejected by INAC earlier this year because it didn’t meet certain criteria under the Resource Partnerships Program – including the fact that the proponent was not a First Nations, Inuit or Innu organization, government or community-owned and controlled enterprise. That’s when KIA joined forces with the governments of Nunavut and Manitoba, and assumed the role of project proponent.
Hugh McMorrow of the Winnipeg-based consulting firm Price and Associates, which has been hired by KIA to spearhead the funding proposal, said that he expects INAC to respond within two weeks of the proposal being submitted. If approved, the project would examine the merits of a half dozen road corridors, each 15 to 20 kilometres wide, then narrow the selection down to one corridor and study specific routes within that corridor to determine the best route. Northern Manitoba and Kivalliq communities would be consulted for their input on route selection as well.
A road would still not be a sure thing. As with any major development, environmental impact studies would have to be done and pass the scrutiny of land use regulatory bodies. Most importantly, the road project requires the full support of all residents affected. Richard Connelly of the Manitoba-Nunavut Business Liaison Office says there are still some major issues, such as treaty entitlement in northern Manitoba, that must be addressed before a road goes in.
PEOPLE AND CARIBOU
From the breakfast table to the board table, cooperation ruled at the BQCMB’s Fond du Lac meeting this past May. Many people pitched in to ensure things ran smoothly. Former BQCMB chairman Jerome Denechezhe demonstrated his skills as chairman, and provided translation for many of the Dene in attendance as well. Much appreciated was the assistance of Saskatchewan alternate member Joe Martin in getting participants to and from the meeting. Martin was filling in for Saskatchewan member Jimmy Laban, who was unable to attend. And not to be overlooked were the culinary talents of new Métis representative for South Slave communities Arthur Beck, a seasoned tour guide who, with several quick flicks of the wrist, had pancakes served up to all at the breakfast table in the cook’s absence. (The cook had been making her own moves on the dance floor the previous night and didn’t rebound as quickly.)
photo
Another new face at the board table is Manitoba Conservation wildlife manager Daryll Hedman, who replaces former board member Cam Elliott. In Nunavut, Joe Tigullaraq has replaced Stephen Atkinson as the Director of Wildlife for the Department of Sustainable Development (DSD). Atkinson plans to attend veterinary school.
DSD has offered to translate Caribou News in Brief into Inuktitut and distribute it to HTOs in the Kivalliq Region. Nunavut member Dan Shewchuk, DSD’s manager of wildlife for the Kivalliq Region, made the offer when the board couldn’t finance the request of community members to obtain the publication in Inuktitut. DSD’s assistance will provide a great service to Caribou News in Brief readers in the Kivalliq.
Just call her “Dr.” – Anne Kendrick, community liaison for the BQCMB’s community-based caribou monitoring project, earned her PhD from the University of Manitoba after much hard work, and has been awarded a post-doctoral position there as well. This paid two-year research position is a windfall for the BQCMB, too, because the position would allow Kendrick to do more work for the board on range-wide caribou monitoring.
