Wildlife management board says government recommendations based on out-of-date data and ignores Inui

Nunavut faces southern censure for not cutting polar bear harvests in Baffin Bay after the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board chose to go with local Inuit knowledge over computer simulations using 11-year-old data.

Peter Ewins of the World Wildlife Fund is leading the charge against the Government of Nunavut for keeping the total allowable harvest for bears in Baffin Bay at 105 animals for the 2008 season.

Ewins told Nunatsiaq News the NWMB's 105-bear harvest for the Baffin Bay population – which Nuna­vut's outgoing Minister of the Environment Olayuk Akesuk has accepted – is "totally unsustainable."

Ewins claimed the bear population in Baffin Bay has "almost certainly declined by 30 per cent" due to overharvesting by Nunavut and Greenlandic hunters combined.

The Nunavut quota has been based on the assumption that Greenland hunters were only taking about 18 to 25 bears a year during the 1990s, he said. "But when the numbers came out, they were taking up to 185 a year," Ewins said.

Government estimates of bear populations in the Baffin area are based on counts from 1994 to 1997, extrapolated with computer models that plug in expected birth and death rates, including Inuit harvesting.

Changes in the Greenland harvesting information, of course, affect the models.

Ewins said Greenland hunters have established a voluntary quota of 100 bears for their side of the Baffin Bay region this year, but the combined total of 205 bears is still much more than the population can sustain "for a slow-reproducing species like the polar bear."

And Ewins also said there is "a very unhelpful anti-science bias" among Inuit hunters.

In a September letter to Akesuk explaining the NWMB's decision, board chair Harry Flaherty said the GN had not provided strong enough scientific data to justify the quota cut that it had asked for earlier.

"The estimate and the projections are based neither on recent scientific surveys nor on Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit," he said.

And in contrast to GN projections, he noted that all local Inuit at the board's April hearings in Pond Inlet were convinced the Baffin Bay bear population is growing.

They consistently reported "a massive increase in polar bear sightings and interactions," Flaherty said.

He added there is a serious danger that Inuit polar bear harvesters "are losing faith in Nunavut's polar bear co-management system."

The Nunavut government's current best practice for gathering scientific data is to do a "mark-recapture" inventory of the population in a given area, Steve Pinksen, a director with the GN's environment department explained.

It requires darting and drugging a significant number of bears, then marking them and fitting them with radio collars, a method that many Inuit feel is too ­invasive and damaging to the bears.

It's also expensive and time consuming, costing up to $1 million and taking up to three years per population group.

Nunavut is responsible for managing 12 of Canada's 13 polar bear population groups, which is why it takes up to 15 years between surveys for each group, and why the last Baffin Bay survey was completed in 1997.

But it does give the scientists accurate base information for their computer modelling, and Pinksen said it is still the best scientific method.

"We don't know any other way that is nearly as accurate," he said, "although we are testing aerial surveying and other possible methods."

Despite his own environment department's concerns, Akesuk accepted the NWMB recommendation to retain a 105-bear quota for the 2008 season.

"We work very closely with the NWMB," he said "We take their recommendations seriously."

What he did not say is that it is probably too late to effectively change the quota for this season anyway.

The Nunavut land claims agreement says that if a minister rejects an NWMB recommendation, the matter must go back to the wildlife board for review and to produce another recommendation.

But the NWMB did not deliver its first recommendation until late September, nearly four months after the July 1 start of the 2008 harvesting season, and fully 17 months after GN officials presented their argument for a significant cut in the quota.

As usual in Nunavut, underfunding and understaffing are major issues for both the environment department and the NWMB.

If Akesuk were to have vetoed the first NWMB recommendation, the 105 bears might already have been harvested before the board produced a second one.

The system may seem cumbersome, but it was designed to ensure beneficiaries retain major control over wildlife management no matter how Nunavut's population may change.

In his letter of reply to Harry Flaherty, Akesuk recognized the NWMB's concern about eroding Inuit faith in the management system, but warned of "drastic effects" if domestic or international partners decide that Nunavut is not looking after its polar bear population.

Under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, Baffin Bay polar bears may no longer be exported, Akesuk said, a warning that has been echoed and emphasized by Ewins.

It's a warning that both Akesuk and Nunavut Tunngavik's director of wildlife, Gabriel Nirlungayuk find offensive.

"Here we go again," Nirlungayuk said, recalling the sealskin boycott of the 1980s against Newfoundland sealing, when Inuit found their income from the seal hunt severely cut back.

"It's quite disheartening and upsetting to hear the WWF," he said. "They live in cities and have no office up here. Then they make assumptions and threatening statements."

He pointed out that Canada's polar bear population has flourished under territorial management. It has grown from about 8,000 in the early 1970s, when systematic management practices were introduced, to about 16,000 today.

Approximately 60 per cent of the world's polar bears live on Canadian territory.

"The world should look into our polar bear management before they pass judgment," Akesuk said. "We have done a great job, and we will continue to do a great job."

Part of the problem may be that the polar bear has become a poster child for people who are concerned about climate change. Anything that might effect bear populations negatively is sure to capture southern attention.

A recent political cartoon in the Globe and Mail tells the tale about how some southerners view Nunavut's relationship with the polar bears.

It shows an executive sitting at a massive and opulent desk in a vast office of the "Nunavut Department of Wildlife Conservation." The office sports expensively wood-panelled walls and an oversized polar-bear rug.

The executive whistles while looking over columns of figures, no doubt adding up the department's huge profits from the overharvesting of bears.

The setting may resemble a Bay Street or Queen's Park office, but anyone familiar with Nunavut knows it presents a patently inaccurate picture of Nunavut wildlife management.

As NTI vice-president Raymond Ningeocheak wrote in a letter to the Globe responding to its coverage of the polar bear quota: "It continues to astound Inuit to read articles by southern journalists suggesting Inuit do not have the long-term interests of wildlife in mind. For thousands of years, the polar bear has been not only a resource that kept Inuit alive, but a highly respected and symbolic animal."