Marine protection group takes aim at bowhead hunt

A damning report issued recently by a Vancouver-based marine protection group insists there is no scientific proof that Nunavut’s small stock of bowhead whales can support even a limited harvest.

“I do think I lay out a pretty solid statement about the state of our understanding of bowhead biology, and it does not support a hunt, period,” said James Hrynshyn, the report’s author.

Hrynshyn a former reporter and editor with the Yellowknife-based newspaper News North, holds a degree in biology. He has written a book on Pacific fish stocks and worked for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

He wrote the 12-page report last year on contract with an organization called the Canadian Marine Environment Protection Society (CMEPS), a non-governmental lobby group based in Vancouver.

The CMEPS will distribute the report next week at a meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Berlin.

Though distribution of Hrynshyn’s report may reinforce the views of those who are already opposed to bowhead whale hunting in Canada, it’s not likely to have any effect on Canadian policies. That’s because Canada hasn’t been a member of the IWC since 1982.

Although he knows his views won’t be popular with many Inuit hunters in Nunavut, Hrynshyn blames the federal government, not Inuit, for what he says was a politically motivated decision to enshrine a bowhead whale harvest in the 1993 Nunavut Land Claims Agreement – when he says government officials didn’t have enough information about the bowhead population.

“That report wasn’t about saying to individual Inuit that you’re bad people for killing bowheads. I think the report tries to show where the system is falling down at the upper levels,” Hrynshyn said.

Hrynshyn does this by lambasting the federal government for not giving DFO the money it needs to do scientific research.

“It’s my direct observation that the science is underfunded to the point where the department [of fisheries and oceans] cannot produce the data and the analysis that they are asked to, and that they are mandated to by the leadership. It makes for a very frustrating organization.”

And because DFO doesn’t have enough scientific information on marine species, the DFO minister often makes quota decisions based on political, rather than scientific considerations.

As for the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board’s Inuit bowhead knowledge study, Hrynshyn said that without the support of scientific research, such anecdotal evidence is worthless.

“It is not the only information you can use, and in fact, if you don’t use real science to supplement the traditional knowledge, I don’t think the results are of any value whatsoever,” Hrynshyn said.

The exhaustive Inuit bowhead knowledge study, completed in 2000, is based on interviews with 252 Inuit hunters and elders from 18 communities. In those interviews, most Inuit informants say they are seeing far more bowhead whales now than in the 1950s.

The study was required by the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, and the NWMB relies on it, along with other information, in setting a limited harvest of one bowhead every two or three years for Nunavut.

Hrynshyn, however, said such “anecdotal” evidence isn’t worth much unless it’s supplemented by scientific research.

“I don’t care what anyone says about anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence is useless. My opinion is that traditional knowledge is only useful in a broader context. You can’t rely exclusively on traditional knowledge when making wildlife conservation decisions.”

Ben Kovic, chair of the NWMB, said it’s not true that the board pays no attention to scientific knowledge when making harvesting recommendations.

“We married traditional knowledge and science together and said, OK, this is the best way to deal with this and that is how we did it,” Kovic said.

And he said the NWMB is still gathering more scientific information about two small bowhead stocks in eastern Arctic waters.

“All our information is based on the best information we have from DFO scientists. That’s how things were determined as to what would be the best total allowable harvest for the Foxe Basin or Baffin Bay stocks. We’re still doing analysis. We’re still doing DNA research and stuff like that,” Kovic said.

Kovic also said that the NWMB, as the organization responsible for wildlife management in Nunavut, puts a high priority on conservation.

“That’s why in Foxe Basin there is only one hunt every two or three years, and in Baffin Bay there is one every nine years. It’s a conservation concern,” Kovic said.

And even Hrynshyn admits that the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement will protect Nunavut’s bowhead whale hunt, even from the new Species at Risk Act.

“If push came to shove and it came before the Supreme Court, I believe the Nunavut land claim would supersede the Species at Risk Act,” he said.