Could a Kitikmeot road kill caribou?

AARON SPITZER

IQALUIT — Representives of an Arctic environmental organization say the proposed Kitikmeot road-and-port project could be bad for caribou.

The 350,000 animals of the Bathurst caribou herd give birth near southern Bathurst Inlet, where mining companies and Kitikmeot leaders hope to build a multi-million-dollar deepsea port.

Kevin O’Reilly, the research director of the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee in Yellowknife, says construction and traffic in the pristine region could disrupt calving, thus reducing the herd’s population.

Inuit depend on the herd for food, as do Dene in the Northwest Territories, who hunt the animals when they migrate south of the treeline in winter. Outfitters in both territories make money by helping sports hunters bag trophy Bathurst bulls.

The road and port — which backers say could be completed in six years — would allow more mines to be developed in the region, by slashing the cost of transporting building materials, and by making it easier to ship lead, zinc and nickel ore to market.

Kitikmeot leaders say the project will create hundreds of jobs for Inuit and pour more than $700 million into residents’ pockets.

Last week, Robert Nault, the minister of the federal Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, announced that Ottawa is jump-starting the project by contributing $3 million to a preliminary study of its feasibility and possible environmental effects.

The Nunavut government and mining companies are matching that windfall with another $3 million.

But O’Reilly, of CARC, condemns Ottawa’s participation in the project. It’s not just caribou that are at stake, he says, but also Canada’s international reputation.

O’Reilly said federal officials are hypocrites for funding research on the Kitikmeot road while opposing oil development in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

“It certainly undermines the Canadian position on drilling in the Arctic refuge, and really questions the credibility of the federal government,” he said in an telephone interview last week.

Ottawa’s environment minister, David Anderson, opposes American plans to drill in the refuge, located in northeastern Alaska. Anderson says drilling would threaten the calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd which migrates through the Yukon and Northwest Territories, and is hunted by Gwich’in Indians.

Nault dismisses comparisons between the Arctic refuge and Bathurst Inlet. Speaking at a press conference in Cambridge Bay last week, he pointed out that part of Ottawa’s $3 million contribution will fund environmental impact research.

“This is, after all, a study,” Nault said. “People are prejudging the process. We’re not sure where this will take us until the study is complete. We’ll go from there.”

But that doesn’t get Ottawa off the hook, O’Reilly said. Part of the money will also go toward route-finding and other preliminary development work which, he said, suggests that the feds have approved the project.

“We don’t think it’s appropriate that the federal government is funding studies that may lead to a port and a road in a calving ground when we’re criticizing the Americans for wanting to do the same,” he said.

O’Reilly also said studies must be done to determine whether the existing mines in the area are hurting caribou. The Lupin, Diavik and Ekati mines lie along the Bathurst herd’s migration route. In the late winter, ice roads in the region see heavy truck traffic.

“We think it’s inappropriate to be supporting further development until we get a much better handle on what’s happening to the herd now,” he said.

Sui-Ling Han, the Nunavut government’s manager of wildlife research, confirmed that the Bathurst caribou calving ground overlaps with the proposed port site.

But she suggested that a greater concern could be what the project might do to the Dolphin and Union caribou herd. That herd, which numbers only 28,000 animals, is listed by biologists as “threatened.”

It spends summers on Victoria Island, and then, just after freeze-up, migrates across Coronation Gulf to the Kitikmeot mainland, where it spends the winter.

Increased marine traffic in the gulf, Han said, might disrupt that migratory route by keeping the ice open longer in the autumn.

Han suggested another potential impact the road might have on caribou: That it could expose them to more harvesting pressure by making it easier for hunters to get around in the Kitikmeot.

Fieldwork on the road-and-port study is already underway. Engineers and environmentalists began scouting the proposed port site and road route in late July. Work will continue next summer. Community consultations on the project will begin this winter.