Beluga management could cause tension

If the quota is put back, there’s gonna be a lot of angry hunters”

By NUNATSIAQ NEWS

SARA MINOGUE

It’s -35 C on a calm, Sunday afternoon, and Pitseolak Alainga is tinkering with one of three skidoos parked in the snow outside his house in Iqaluit.
On a day like this, winter seems like it could last forever.

But like many hunters in Iqaluit, Alainga is worried about what might happen next summer if the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans makes changes to the beluga hunting rules that, for now, at least, allow hunters to take as many beluga as they want out of Frobisher Bay.

Alainga, 37, had been hunting beluga since the age of six.

“If the quota is put back, there’s gonna be a lot of angry hunters,” Alainga says, as frost collects on his moustache.

Alainga is more concerned than most hunters because he is on the board of the Amarok Hunters and Trappers Association.

“If DFO brings the quota back… the hunters are gonna take it out on us,” Alainga says. “And then they’ll be hunting more instead of following the rules.”

The HTO was glad to see a DFO representative at their annual general meeting earlier this month, but Alainga was not pleased that it was someone he’d never seen before.

“The bigger guys could have been there and kind of explained things to the public,” Alainga said.

For five years, Iqaluit beluga hunters have regulated their own hunts under a community-based management plan that expires on March 30, 2005.

DFO is reviewing that plan, at a time when hunters are not doing a good job of reporting the number of whales they catch, one of their responsibilities under the current agreement.

But the DFO could also do a better job of reporting its own information, and explaining why they think whales are endangered — an opinion that is contrary to traditional knowledge.

Alainga, for one, does not believe that subsistence hunting could cause a beluga population to become extinct.

“As a hunter, I was taught that the more we catch, the same amount of belugas will be coming around, but if we stop hunting them, then, just like any other animals, they tend to move,” he said.

“I think there’s still quite a bit of beluga. Not just in south Baffin but all around Nunavut. If there are thousands of belugas up in Grise and Resolute that they don’t hunt and they’re hunting narwhal instead, I don’t know why DFO is saying we’re running out of beluga down here. Animals don’t stay in one spot, animals move around forever.”

Alainga said that, as an HTO board member, he has tried to convince hunters to report their successful beluga hunts, even if they only bring in a piece of rope to indicate the length of a whale. Many hunters, however, forget to record this information while camping overnight, or they lose track of the information when they break camp.

Hunters who do report to the HTO get $100, which is later reimbursed by DFO.

In the mean time, if hunters don’t report their catches, both they and the DFO may face unpleasant consequences.

“Back in 1988 we had a quota of five,” Alainga said, “and all these hunters said ‘we’re not going to listen to the quota, we’re not going to listen to DFO, we’re not going to listen to the Nunavut wildlife management board. We’re going out and hunt our beluga, the way we’ve been hunting our beluga forever.’ I think that’s what they’re going to be saying.”

Whatever happens, Alainga hopes the beluga will still be there for hunting so that he can teach his three sons, aged 7, 14 and 16, the ways of the past.

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