Nunavut will seek increase in Davis Strait polar bear quota

The Government of Nunavut is ready to recommend an increase in the number of polar bears which can be hunted in the Davis Strait, territorial environment minister Daniel Shewchuk said March 3 in the Nunavut legislature. (FILE PHOTO)

Hunters in the Nunavut communities of Iqaluit, Pangnirtung, and Kimmirut may soon be able to hunt more polar bears, because the Government of Nunavut now plans to recommend an increase to the current annual quota of 46.

But that increase is not likely to come into effect until after July 1, Nunavut’s environment minister Daniel Shewchuk said March 3 in the Nunavut legislature.

Shewchuk said GN’s environment department has consulted with the three south Baffin communities about its recommendation.

“From 2005 to 2007 we conducted a comprehensive population survey of Davis Strait. This survey provided an estimate of approximately 2,300 polar bears, substantially higher than the previous estimate,” Shewchuk said.

The GN now plans to recommend the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board consider increasing the quota, he said.

“Scientific and other information sometimes indicates that there are conservation concerns, and a need to reduce harvesting when populations have declined. This current situation in Davis Strait illustrates that is not always the case, and when populations increase we respond by increasing harvest,” he told the legislative assembly.

During the March 3 question period in the legislative assembly, Adamee Komoartok, the MLA for Pangnirtung, wanted to know why the expanded hunt wouldn’t be approved before July 1.

Disappointed to learn the new quota wouldn’t kick in until this summer, because that’s when new quotas generally take effect, Komoartok noted how moratoriums placed on polar bear hunts have usually taken effect immediately.

Nunavut’s annual polar bear quota for the Davis Strait now stands at 46. Labrador hunters take about six Davis Strait polar bears a year.

And Nunavik hunters hunt as many Davis Strait bears as they want, averaging a take of about 12 over a five-year period.

Greenland has a quota of two, but didn’t take any polar bears at all from Davis Strait between 2005 and 2007.

Little sport hunting takes place in the Davis Strait, and no polar bears were killed by non-Inuit hunters in 2008-09.

The Amarok Hunters and Trappers Organization, which represents hunters in Iqaluit, said last December that it had the go-ahead by NWMB to hunt up to 41 polar bears in 2011, 32 males and nine females, due to credits that it had accumulated over several years.

The GN’s three-year survey, carried out between 2005 and 2007, determined there are at least 2,142 polar bears in the Davis Strait population, said information tabled at the NWMB in 2009.

The survey’s findings confirmed what Inuit hunters have said for a long time: polar bears along the southeast coast of Baffin Island, in northern Nunavik, and the northern coast of Labrador, are growing in number.

The numbers of polar bears increased due to a population explosion among harp seals and the relatively low harvest rate of about 60 bears a year in the Davis Strait, the survey said.

But, although polar bear numbers there have increased, the survey’s authors also predicted then that these numbers would decline — even without more hunting.

They said that if the quota remained the same, the number of polar bears in the Davis Strait would decline to 1,400 in 2016.

If the quota was raised to 85 bears, by adding 20 bears to the number already hunted, the population would be only be 1,200 in 2016, it said.

No figure was offered in the Nunavut legislature for the expected increase to the Davis Strait polar bear quota.