Nunavut wildlife board to consider walrus quota for Foxe Basin

The proposed boundary for a new Foxe Basin walrus management unit. Baffin residents will get an opportunity to learn more about, and comment on, the new management plan, and quota of 116 walrus for that area, at meetings in Igloolik Jan. 14 and Jan. 15. (DFO MAP)

After extensive consultation with hunters and trappers groups, years of working group meetings and some aerial surveys, Fisheries and Oceans Canada is proposing to limit the number of walrus harvested in Foxe Basin.

The federal fisheries department is suggesting a total allowable catch, or quota, of 116 walrus be applied to a new rectangular-shaped management area in Foxe Basin that takes in the communities of Hall Beach and Igloolik.

According to maps provided in DFO background material, the area looks to be roughly 500 kilometres wide and about 800 km long, at its longest point.

“Based on recent DFO science advice and reported landed catch data, there may be conservation concerns with the sustainability of current harvest levels for the Foxe Basin stocks,” says a DFO submission to the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board.

“To date, the response from communities has been positive with regards to the development of a walrus management plan,” the DFO submission says, “but consensus was not reached on some of the proposed changes.”

Consensus was not reached, for example, on the harvesting quota.

The NWMB is holding public hearings in Igloolik Jan. 14 to Jan. 15 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the community hall to gather input from area hunters and residents on the quota, and on a new management area in Foxe Basin.

“DFO stock assessment research objectives are to maintain walrus population health and diversity, and support sustainable walrus hunts,” says a DFO backgrounder submitted to the NWMB.

“These objectives are achieved by developing methods to minimize the uncertainty associated with population abundance estimates, understanding effects of harvest, and changing environmental conditions, and predicting future trends in abundance under various scenarios.”

In plain language, that means DFO staff consult community members, count the animals as best they can and come up with a complex equation that attempts to balance both community needs and population preservation.

It also means that regardless of what happens at those public meetings in January, the final decision on hunting quotas in Nunavut remains with Ottawa.

Based on a February 2013 consensus between the NWMB and DFO, any quota established for walrus would be equal to the “basic needs level,” which means Inuit would get the entire quota.

Basic needs levels, defined in the Nunavut Land Claim Agreement under Article 5, Part 6, are set when a harvesting quota is established for a particular animal population in order to preserve a certain number for Inuit hunters.

Walrus in the Canadian eastern Arctic fall into at least two distinct genetic groups: the High Arctic and the central Arctic populations.

High Arctic Walrus have three stocks: Baffin Bay (shared with Greenland), West Jones Sound and Penny Strait-Lancaster Sound.

The Central Arctic population also has three stocks: Hudson Bay-Davis Strait (shared with Greenland and Nunavik), northern Foxe Basin and central Foxe Basin.

For the purpose of this quota, DFO are proposing to combine the northern and central Foxe Basin stocks into one management unit.

Teams from DFO conducted an aerial survey in 2011 and estimate that walrus in that management unit number between about 10,000 and 13,500 animals. Ottawa based their proposed quota using the higher population estimate.