'Law is going to be broken many times in the next few years.'

RANKIN INLET – Delegates at the Kivalliq Inuit Association's annual general meeting last week bashed the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board's 2006 decision to slash polar bear quotas in the Kivalliq.

They also passed a unanimous resolution Oct. 29 calling for an end to the use of tranquilizers and radio collars in polar bear research.

But while a rumoured resolution calling for civil disobedience never materialized, KIA president Jose Kusugak predicted wildlife authorities are going to have a hard time enforcing the quota.

"I can assure you, because of the population of polar bears breaking into cabins, going into towns, that stupid law is going to be broken many times in the next few years," he said.

"We're suggesting that, being a stupid law, it ought to be challenged because the [polar bear] count is not valid as far as the people are concerned."

Kusugak said hunters are reporting record numbers of polar bears in the region and recommended that defence kills be exempted from the quota.

The KIA and the Kivalliq Wildlife Board have both written letters protesting the new quota. Kusugak said hunters would be justified in ignoring the quota, but said he hopes it won't come to that, and that the dispute can be resolved in a "gentlemanly way."

Earlier this fall the NWMB slashed the number of tags available to hunters in the Kivalliq from 38 in 2007 to eight this year.

The decision itself was made in 2006. It was based on GN research that saw their estimate of the Western Hudson Bay bear population drop from 1,200 in 2005 to 950 in 2006.

Hunters have already used two of the eight tags, Arviat's KIA representative, Thomas Ubluriak, told delegates.

Steve Pinksen, the director of policy, planning and legislation with the Nunavut government's environment department, said land claims organizations and the KWB were all involved in the process that led to the quota decision.

If hunters do take polar bears without tags, Pinksen said department officials will investigate such incidents as they do right now. That can lead to charges, he said.

The KIA's vice president, Joe Kaludjak, said the quota cut will hurt full-time hunters.

"It doesn't really make any sense now in trying to harvest a polar bear because one has to go a long way and the pelts aren't going to be paying that much."

The government's science got a drubbing from KIA delegates, who said polar bears are coming closer to communities every year.

Repulse Bay representative David Tukturdjuk said Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, which he said tracks both bears and their food sources, like seals, indicates there are more bears in the West Hudson Bay area than ever.

"The biologists don't think about this," he said. "We Inuit have more knowledge than these so-called biologists."

Kusugak said the traditional knowledge that KIA is relying on is based on an equally scientific method. The difference from southern science is that the "research" is not meticulously documented, he said.

Pinksen said the Western Hudson Bay population is "probably the most studied polar bear population in the world."

"It's been under pretty much constant annual survey for…near on 30 years."

Elder representative Joanasie Nakoolak said scientists should learn to track bears the way Inuit do, instead of using radio collars. "The population is not declining, it's the movement of the bears," he said.

He also said they should avoid tranquilizing bears because elders don't like to eat the meat of bears that have been tranquilized.

Pinksen said wildlife officials would use another method to study bears if it was available. He said the department, the NWMB, birthright organizations and hunters and trappers groups plan to meet this winter in an attempt to develop better research techniques.