‘It’s feeding our people’: Caribou hunters eager for bigger harvest

Kinngait hunter Taqialuk Nuna looks forward to harvesting caribou this season.

It’s something that’s been a long time coming. Last week, after a decade of limiting barrenland caribou harvests on Baffin Island, the Government of Nunavut announced it’s raising the quota to 6,000 caribou — tenfold from the quota of 550 that was in place last year.

This means a lot for the younger generation in the area, some of whom haven’t gotten the chance to learn how to hunt, said Nuna, who is also the chairperson of Aivik Hunters and Trappers Association, based in Kinngait.

“It’s really good for the hunters, especially the young ones — they didn’t grow up hunting caribou, now they do,” he said.

His association has 750 caribou hunting permits to give out to the roughly 1,400 people who live in the community. Last year the association had 58.

“It’s really good for the community because it’s been too long that they’ve held it back,” Nuna said. “It’s feeding our people.”

This year’s quota makes 12 per cent of the animal’s estimated population of nearly 49,000 available to hunt. Ahead of the hunting season, some board members with the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board expressed concerns about the proposed ratio, saying it created an “unusual and largely unprecedented level of risk” to the caribou, which is on the rebound.

In 2015, there was a temporary moratorium on barrenland caribou hunting on the island after surveys the year prior found the population had fallen to around 4,600. 

Previous estimates dating from the 1980s had placed numbers at an estimated 100,000 to 150,000. 

Nuna said he’s confident the caribou will breed quickly enough for population growth to continue. He said keeping population numbers down will also reduce the chances of disease spread.

Initially, researchers at the Department of Environment had recommended that only five per cent of Baffin Island’s caribou population be hunted this season, and that hunting limitations remain in effect for female caribou and their calves.

It was a conservative and “safe” proposal, said Drikus Gissing, the director of wildlife management at Nunavut’s Department of Environment, responsible for monitoring their numbers. 

But that changed after government officials consulted with local hunting organizations in February.

“The HTOs were willing to take a higher risk,” Gissing said in an interview.

Gissing credited the recovery of the Baffin Island herds to collaboration between the territorial government, researchers, and the local hunter organizations, which have respected the quotas.

The risk of the population collapsing again is “really low,” Gissing said.

Over the last 10 years, the caribou population in Baffin Island has increased at a rate of 25 per cent per year, which is faster than what he has seen in herds elsewhere.

Gissing said the low number of predators in Baffin Island and regrowth in lichen, which caribou feast on, may have factored into the herd recovery. The population plummet noticed in 2014 happened because the caribou had exhausted their food source.

“They deplete the lichens that they rely on, especially in winter, and these lichens grow back very slowly,” Gissing explained.

“What the communities want is to protect the habitat and to not let the caribou increase so much that they eventually eat themselves out of house and home.”

He said researchers will continue to actively monitor the size and health of caribou herds in Baffin Island. If any conservation concerns come up in the future, Gissing said there’s always the possibility of suggesting a lower hunting quota.

The caribou quota will remain in place until June 30, 2027.