Nunavut narwhal tusk tracking now a complex game, Inuit wildlife org learns

An online ad placed by a resident of Kugaaruk wanted to find a buyer for this rare double-tusked narwhal skull.

Jeff MacDonald, conservation and protection supervisor for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Iqaluit, holds a tagged narwhal tusk. (FILE PHOTO)

A new process wants to track each narwhal’s tusk from the hunt to the buyer. (FILE PHOTO)

CAMBRIDGE BAY — From the harvest of a narwhal to the sale of its tusk, narwhal hunting has become more complex for hunters in Nunavut, members of the Kitikmeot Regional Wildlife Board heard Oct. 18 at their annual general meeting in Cambridge Bay.

A hunter must first obtain a narwhal tag for the hunt, and then, after harvesting the narwhal, bring the tusk to a federal fisheries officer, territorial conservation officer, or member of the RCMP to make sure it’s properly measured and tagged, Jeff MacDonald, conservation and protection supervisor for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Iqaluit, told the gathering.

The new narwhal-tagging measures are all part of Nunavut’s effort to address ivory trade issues, he said — which continue to be controversial internationally.

Last year marked the first full year that these measures, part of the Integrated Fisheries Management Plan for Narwhal, approved in May 2013, have been in place, MacDonald said.

Before the “narwhal tusk traceability plan,” each tusk was measured and received a marine mammal tag.

But when tusks arrived at the ivory dealers, they would polish the base and tip, so the measurements would be off, and sometimes the tags fell off, too.

And some elders, a participant at the meeting told MacDonald, aren’t keen to go to the police with their tusks.

Even now, there are still narwhal tusk-tags that don’t match up with the tusks or fall off, even though they are attached to the tusk with two holes.

But it’s important that the trade in narwhal tusks be regulated, said MacDonald. That’s because narwhal tusks are part of the worldwide trade of ivory, he said — and the world is watching to see that Nunavut is managing its trade and that over-harvesting is not taking place.

The idea behind the narwhal tusk-tagging is to follow the tusk from the hunter to the buyer. That, MacDonald said, is “a positive step,” because it shows the tusk is a “legally harvested product.”

The process adds value to a tusk, he said — although some dealers have complained the tags devalue the tusks, if they are used for display purposes.

That being said, Nunavut narwhal hunters now can’t sell a tusk to anyone in the United States for any purpose at all, due to that nation’s longstanding restrictions on marine mammal imports — or they risk fines and jail terms similar to those handed down last year to a Canadian man after he helped export 250 narwhal tusks from Canada into the U.S.

Yet many narwhal tusk brokers still call hunting and trapping organization offices and send up information to hunters by fax, said AGM delegates from Taloyoak and Kugaaruk.

For “quick, easy money,” local co-operative stores will buy narwhal tusks, they said. But it’s also possible to sell tusks for “four or five times more,” they said, through online forums such as eBay, where tusks can fetch from $2,000 to more than $50,000 for a rare double tusk and skull.

James Panioyak, who chairs Cambridge Bay’s Ekalututiak HTO, suggested the regional wildlife board could perhaps consider brokering narwhal tusks directly to buyers to ensure hunters get more cash.

But that could be hard: a website for a company dealing in narwhal tusks, polarexotics.com, says that “given the extensive regulations governing the purchase, sale, ownership, and transportation of tusks, ” the company is “very careful about purchasing tusks from individuals” and “does not buy tusks without a harvest tag and paperwork.”

Narwhal is subject to import and export controls from CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, an international watchdog group that sets controls on the cross-border sale of threatened species.

Shipments, which are prohibited by many countries, require a lot of paperwork.

The amount earned by hunters can still add up: the annual narwhal quota for the Kitikmeot region’s five communities stands at 450, although some of 2014’s 559 tags are from the previous year, carried over under a new, soon-to-be approved, “flex-tag” plan. To date, 60 narwhal have been harvested in Kugaaruk this year, the KRWB heard.

But not every community in the Kitikmeot region even sees narwhal — Cambridge Bay saw only its second major visit by narwhal in 2012 and Taloyoak hasn’t seen any in years.

Along with concerns over what to do with narwhal tusks, there’s also worry about the wastage of narwhal maktaaq and meat, which don’t have the same value.

“We have to do our part as well to conserve what we hunt. It’s not pleasant to say, but it’s reality — and I think we need to do more,” said James Eeetoolook, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. vice-president, who also chairs the NTI-Inuit wildlife and environment advisory committee.