Nunavik hunters bristle at beluga quotas

IQALUIT — Nunavik hunters, eager to get more of a say in the region’s new beluga management plan, aren’t pleased to see their local hunt cut.

At a recent meeting in Kuujjuaq they learned the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans wants hunters from the eastern Hudson Bay and Ungava Bay to limit the local killing of beluga.

DFO wants area harvesters to travel elsewhere to hunt from healthier herds.

DFO’s suggestion would see hunters from eastern Hudson Bay communities reduce their present local harvest of 90 beluga to 30 animals. They would also be able to hunt an additional 30 animals from the larger and healthier James Bay stock.

DFO is asking hunters along Ungava Bay to stop killing beluga anywhere in the bay during August and take their quota of 50 beluga from migrating herds in the Hudson Strait at other times of the summer and fall.

The idea is to take the stress off beluga in eastern Hudson Bay and Ungava Bay, and direct hunters to more plentiful populations in James Bay and Hudson Strait.

“The government is basically telling us we don’t know how to plan,” said Johnny Oovaut, the mayor of Quaqtaq. “It’s like we were telling the farmers down South to kill only 10 cows a year.”

The DFO is also proposing Nunavik’s overall quota rise by 10. But Nunavik has exceeded its quotas by about 48 beluga — 20 per cent — every year since 1996.

And hunters were hoping for an increase in the quota.

More restrictive quotas could mean more violations, Oovaut said.

He fears DFO will enforce the new quotas the way it did with lobster quotas last summer at Burnt Church, N.B., when out-of-season harvesting was forcibly closed to aboriginal fisherman.

Oovaut isn’t sure Nunavik’s handful of fisheries guardians can prevent widespread poaching.

“I think they want muktuk just like we do,” Oovaut said.

But the DFO doesn’t intend to step up its presence in Nunavik this summer.

“Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t. Nunavik is too vast a region,” said Christian Rouleau, the DFO’s coordinator of aboriginal fisheries.

Rouleau is convinced the new management plan will have support.

“I think it will be more respected than the last time,” Rouleau said. “The process has been much more focused in the North. Of course, we won’t be signing a plan that is acceptable 100 per cent to the DFO or 100 per cent to the hunters. There will be compromises.”

According to Rouleau, a yearly re-evaluation of quotas and more feedback from the DFO will encourage more collaboration from hunters. The DFO is also agreeing to conduct a new aerial survey of beluga as well as a study on the impact of noise on the whales.

But many still aren’t persuaded by DFO scientists who report reduced numbers of beluga along the eastern Hudson Bay, and almost none in the Ungava Bay.

“They’re really focused on their work,” Oovaut said. “Maybe they feel because they’re scientists that their work in infallible, but they don’t see some of the behavior of whales.”

The final meeting designed to come up with a new beluga management plan is scheduled for May 15 in Kuujjuaq.