DFO slashes Nunavik beluga quotas

JANE GEORGE

QUEBEC CITY — The federal department of fisheries and oceans is clamping down on Nunavik’s beluga hunt in a move that’s sure to anger the region’s hunters.

“We’re closing certain areas to hunting and we’re substantially reducing the numbers,” said Daniel Caron, the DFO’s interim regional director in Quebec.

The DFO has decided to close the Ungava Bay and Eastern Hudson Bay to all beluga hunting.

The decision is based on a low beluga count from last summer’s aerial survey, which showed the beluga population at 200 in Ungava Bay and 1,200 along the Eastern Hudson Bay.

Hunters will be able to hunt belugas only in James Bay and Hudson Strait, where stocks are healthier.

At the same time, the DFO is limiting each community to an annual harvest of 15 beluga, and obliging hunters from some communities to travel for all or part of their allowable catch.

Hunters near the Hudson Strait — in Kangirsuk, Quaqtaq, Kangiqsujuaq, Salluit, Ivujivik, Akulivik and Puvirnituq — will be able to hunt their quota of 15 each in the Hudson Strait.

But hunters who live in the Ungava Bay communities of Aupaluk, Tasiujaq, Kuujjuaq and Kangiqsualujjuaq will be able to kill only five belugas in the Hudson Strait. For the other 10, hunters from these communities have to travel to James Bay or Long Island north of James Bay — places many hunters from these communities say they’ve never been to and don’t have large enough boats to reach.

The DFO is requiring all hunters in Inukjuak, Umiujaq and Kuujjuaraapik to take their belugas in James Bay.

Some money for hunters

Caron doesn’t expect Nunavik hunters to applaud this new management plan.

“I can’t say we have the consensus and support of the population. That wouldn’t be true, even though we had lots of community consultation,” Caron said. “As soon as measures have an impact on people, they’re not popular. This would be the same in the South. When we cut the cod quotas, it wasn’t a popular move.”

To soften the blow, Caron said there will be some money for hunters in the James Bay region, although it won’t be the $50,000 a year Nunavik asked for.

“I don’t have it in my budget,” Caron said.

The DFO is negotiating with groups in Nunavut to bring some beluga meat and muktuk from the western Hudson Bay area to Nunavik.

Caron is also promising that the DFO will work more closely in the future with the communities to develop a management plan similar to Nunavut’s community-based beluga management scheme.

But, in the meantime, the DFO plans to keep tabs on Nunavik’s hunters.

“We’ll follow what happens this summer very closely and we’ll make sure that the plan is followed,” Caron said. “We have a plan, though we don’t have the resources we’d like in the region.”

Nunavik has a only handful of fisheries guardians, who track the number of belugas killed each year.

Two DFO fisheries officers from the South are also to tour the communities this summer.

As well, fisheries agents from Nunavut will be brought in to enforce the plan.

“Of course, we’re not going to bring in the army,” Caron said.

In 2001, hunters killed at least 395 animals, or about 29 belugas per community.

The DFO’s biologists had warned Nunavik hunters that if they don’t reduce their hunt, it would deplete beluga stocks around Nunavik within 15 years.

Now, with the federal Species at Risk Act likely to become law, the DFO will be obliged to protect belugas if the population is endangered or at risk of extinction.

Last Tuesday, Liberals pushed the bill through the House of Commons in its third reading. The vote was 148-85, despite the opposition of the Canadian Alliance, Bloc Québécois, New Democrats and Conservatives.

The bill will now go to the Senate for final approval.

“If it passes, that changes the legal context. We would have the legal obligation to have a recovery plan in place,” Caron said.

Caron said the DFO has already approached Makivik Corporation and the Kativik Regional Government to work on such a plan.