Caribou carcasses litter Nunavut island — why?

This is just one of the many dead caribou spotted in 2015 on Prince Charles Island by researchers. (PHOTO BY PAUL SMITH)

Scientists want to know why more than 50 caribou on Nunavut’s Prince Charles Island in Foxe Basin, all of which show no obvious sign of mortal injury, have died.

Environment Canada research scientist and bird biologist, Paul Smith, said he first spotted the dead caribou last July when he flew over Prince Charles Island, located in the Foxe Basin, on a survey mission for a new research cabin site.

“I noticed these strange looking dark rocks with white rings around them. I didn’t make much of it, but I though it looked odd,” Smith, a 17-year veteran of Nunavut research, told Nunatsiaq News from his Ottawa home Aug. 4.

“When we landed I realized what that was — the flesh of the caribou was dark crimson, surrounded by a white ring of fur that had been blown off the carcass.”

When Smith’s Twin Otter aircraft landed to investigate, his team counted 47 dead caribou dotting the tundra around them.

On another part of the island, at the team’s campsite, researchers spotted another five dead caribou within only a kilometre of the camp.

“If you can imagine a caribou dropped over where it was standing and dried out in the sunshine,” Smith described the carcasses, which he believes to be “in the order of months” old.

“There was nothing obvious [leading to death] from a visual inspection,” he said, adding that all ages and genders of caribou were found among the remains.

The discovery poses significant impact for the Baffin Island caribou population that has been decimated in recent years, with an estimated 3,500 to 6,300 caribou accounted for in 2014 — a decrease from the 60,000 to 180,000 estimated in 1991.

According to Smith, the 2014 report said a least a third of the entire Baffin herd was on Prince Charles Island when the survey was carried out.

In 2015 the Government of Nunavut imposed an eight-month moratorium on harvesting Baffin caribou, followed by a modest quota established later that year that hunters still struggle to fill.

Smith and Nunavut’s Department of Environment stress that the cause of the deaths has yet to be determined, with the GN saying it won’t comment on the cause until researchers complete their investigation.

But Smith observed, as evidence against a starvation scenario, that on the island there was plenty of lichen, which is the main source of food for caribou.

“I work a lot on Southampton Island, which has in the past had a very large population of caribou to the point where they’ve been eating themselves out of house and home,” Smith said.

But that doesn’t seem to be the case on Prince Charles Island.

“I’m used to seeing far less lichen than what I saw on Prince Charles Island and still have healthy caribou around,” he added.

“[The dead caribou] looked skinny, but not obviously starving.”

Smith’s guides also reported finding five more dead caribou under similar circumstances on Coats Island, far to the south of Prince Charles Island.

“Five isn’t a whole lot, but when my Ph.D. student reported another five [on Coats Island] then that’s suddenly getting a little strange,” he said.

Smith said “it’s possible” that weather might have played a factor in the caribou deaths.

“One thing I noticed with these caribou is they tended to be on the side of ridges,” he said.

“It’s possible that either caribou were seeking out area where there was less snow, because those ridges were acting like a snow fence, or they were trying to get out of the wind. If it was some kind of weather related mortality they might have been hiding in the ridges.”

But any conclusions on the cause of death will not be definitive until the Department of Environment wraps its investigation and releases its findings.