Moose making no inroads into Arctic

AARON SPITZER

IQALUIT — Nunavummiut can scratch mooseburgers off their menus.

Despite rare sightings of moose on the tundra, the gangly forest-dwellers aren’t moving into Nunavut.

That’s the conclusion of wildlife biologists who work in the Kivalliq and Kitikmeot regions.

Many years ago a hapless moose meandered to the outskirts of Arviat and ended up on residents’ dinner plates, said Mitch Campbell, the Nunavut government’s wildlife biologist for the Kivalliq.

And every few years Arviat hunters bag one of the big deer on a trip to the treeline, 75 kilometres distant, he said.

But in general, harvesters aren’t reporting more moose on the barrens.

“We haven’t seen a flood of moose,” Campbell said.

The same is true in western Nunavut, said Brent Patterson, the GN’s Kitikmeot-region wildlife biologist.

For years, hard-core moose-lovers in Kugluktuk have traveled south to the forest to bag the big ungulates.

Once, in mid-wintered, a cow moose even wandered up to the sea ice, Patterson said.

But moose seem no more common in the central Arctic than they’ve ever been.

Recent reports about climate change have suggested that, as part of global warming, southern mammals are moving into Nunavut.

Campbell, of Arviat, said those assertions are a bit overblown.

He’s quick to agree that global warming could change the population distribution of Arctic animals — with moose likely moving north and caribou being displaced from their present range.

But those shifts haven’t shown themselves yet.

In fact, some opposite trends have arisen.

One phenomenon Kivalliq hunters have observed is that muskox are spreading south and east — “Which is opposite from what you’d think,” Campbell said.

Over the last several years the shaggy tundra creatures have been getting closer to Arviat, and there have been several confirmed sightings of them turning up amongst the white spruce and tamarack of the northern forest.

“For every example of the odd moose sighting that we might see, we’ve also got the odd Arctic mammal that’s finding its way further south,” Campbell said.

Both Campbell and Patterson said the ranges of caribou in their regions don’t seem to be shifting, even though the herds’ locations fluctuate from year to year.

Caribou herds around Arviat appear to be doing particularly well, Campbell said.

He said that for now, climate change is likely manifesting itself more subtly. Harvesters are reporting changes in fish size and color, and biologists say they’ve seen changes in the size of polar-bear cubs.

Gri ly bears have been getting more common in the Kivalliq, but Campbell thinks that’s probably because their numbers in the west are growing and the excess bears are spilling onto the barrens.

Other than that, the biologists say they’ve documented few out-of-place newcomers to Nunavut.

“We got a few interesting beetles that were blown in this summer,” Patterson said. “Surprisingly, a few people get pretty worked up about that.”

“But we’re not contending with any reptiles or anything,” he said.