Nunavut stakeholders agree Baffin caribou need management plan now

Gabriel Nirlungayuk, the GN’s deputy minister of environment and co-chair of the recent caribou consultation meetings in Iqaluit, says he hopes to have a Baffin caribou management in place for next summer. (PHOTO BY THOMAS ROHNER)

As the Baffin caribou community consultation wrapped up in Iqaluit Nov. 4, a consensus emerged that the animal’s low numbers are worrisome, that a management plan is needed immediately and that traditional Inuit knowledge can provide the way forward.

That’s according to Gabriel Nirlungayuk, deputy minister of the territory’s environment department, who co-chaired the two-day meeting between representatives from Baffin region hunter trappers organizations, elders advisory committees, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board and Nunavut government officials.

“People talked a lot about traditional knowledge, and how we need to go back and use traditional knowledge to conserve caribou,” Nirlungayuk told Nunatsiaq News Nov. 4, adding that a management plan already exists for polar bear and narwhal.

“Now for Baffin Island, there’s a consensus that we ought to draft a management plan for caribou immediately. There is nothing right now.”

Representatives at the meeting discussed a number of possible management measures, Nirlungayuk said, including:

• limiting harvests during the spring season, when fur and meat “are not very good;”

• finding ways to help caribou cross over to Baffin Island from the mainland; and,

• Identifying and conserving caribou calving areas.

“We ought to pay attention to those sensitive calving areas,” Nirlungayuk said, “so that we do not disturb them, whether you’re a hunter or you’re a biologist or you’re a mining company.”

An aerial survey done by the environment department earlier this year, and presented at the meeting Nov. 3, counted between 3,500 and 6,300 caribou on Baffin.

This estimate, though higher than initial estimates earlier this year, is still a long way from the 60,000 to 180,000 estimated in 1991.

But the sharp decline in recent years is consistent with patterns of population cycles known to traditional Inuit knowledge, Troy Pretzlaw, a Baffin regional biologist with the Government of Nunavut, told Nunatsiaq News Nov. 4.

“It fits very well with our current understanding of Baffin caribou population cycles, which is based largely on traditional knowledge, and it fits with what we know about other herds,” he said.

Caribou populations can fluctuate by up to 95 per cent, Pretzlaw said, with the low extreme lasting 20 to 30 years.

“It’s common, when you get into an environment where there are fewer species, less interactions in the food web and the environment is more extreme, that the populations of animals tend to extremes,” Pretzlaw said.

Representatives at the meeting will now consult with their own communities, Nirlungayuk said, and the NWMB will then draft a management plan in conjunction with regional wildlife organizations and local HTOs.

“We’re perhaps looking, being optimistic, within two or three months, at having a draft,” he said.

Nirlungayuk hoped a draft would be available for all stakeholders to review by the spring and then, “hopefully by mid-year, there will be a management plan in place,” he said.

After the NWMB drafts a plan, incorporating input from regional wildlife organizations and HTOs, the territory’s environment minister, Johnny Mike, has 30 days to either approve the plan, approve it with changes, or to reject it.

Under the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, the GN must consult with Inuit when managing wildlife. And the federal government does not become involved, Nirlungayuk explained, unless the species is in danger of extinction.