Nunavut increases annual polar bear quota by 115

The Government of Nunavut finally confirmed last week what hunters in Nunavut have long been waiting for: an increase, by 115 across the territory, of annual polar bear quotas for the next 14 years.

“It’s a good news story, and it will benefit our people,” said Olayuk Akesuk, Nunavut’s minister of environment. “It’s not about economics, but putting more polar bear meat on your table.”

The number of polar bears that can be legally harvested every year in Nunavut is now 518.

The new quota distribution is as follows:

* The largest quota increases are for the Baffin Bay population, up by 41 polar bears for Qikiqtarjuaq, Clyde River and Pond Inlet, and for the Gulf of Boothia, where hunters in Gjoa Haven, Hall Beach, Igloolik, Kugaaruk, Repulse Bay and Taloyoak may hunt 33 more polar bears.

* Increases for the Davis Strait mean Iqaluit and Pangnirtung each receive five more polar bears.

* Three polar bears can be harvested every year from the depleted M’Clintock Channel population — at least for the next six years, with Cambridge Bay and Gjoa Haven sharing this quota.

* Taloyoak, which also hunted the M’Clintock population, will now turn to Boothia Bay for its polar bears. Taloyoak will have an additional 10 bears from the Boothia Bay population.

These increases mean the total allowable harvest for Nunavut is close to what it was between 1992 to 1996, when about 500 polar bears were killed a year.

The increase compensates for the loss of the polar bear hunt from the M’Clintock Channel, cut from 32 to zero in 2001 after an aerial survey determined the polar bear population had taken a nosedive.

The numbers are also higher this year because Inuit knowledge is being used as a basis for the new management plans.

For years, hunters have said polar bear numbers are up in several Nunavut populations. More nuisance bears have been spotted in or near communities.

The management plans and quota numbers are outlined in memoranda of understanding, or MOUs. They recommend a total allowable harvest per community based on the current scientific numbers for the first seven years after a population survey is done, and Inuit knowledge for the following seven years.

According to the text of the MOUs, all parties will meet at least once every seven years “to review and update information and set direction for the continuing management of polar bears.”

The MOUs were to have been ready for the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board’s meeting last September.

Delays occurred for more than three years. After local and regional hunting and trapping organizations and the GN signed off on the MOUs, these “records of consultations” went to the NWMB, which referred its recommendations back to Akesuk for final approval.

A solid MOU package is important because Nunavut, unlike Nunavik or Greenland, has a U.S.-approved sport polar bear hunt.

Under the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act, bearskins and trophies may only be imported from areas of Canada that have healthy bear populations and a sustainable hunt — and can prove it to the U.S. authorities’ satisfaction.

Akesuk said he isn’t worried how the U.S. will react to the higher quotas in Nunavut.

“We have other people in the world besides Americans who would do the hunt,” he said.

But numbers of bears are still considered as the primary basis for polar bear stock management, according to the 1973 “Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears,” which was struck long before anyone worried much about the integration of traditional knowledge into scientific research.

Since the 1973 agreement, Norway and Russia have banned the killing of polar bears, although it’s believed that up to 200 bears are still being illegally harvested in Russia. Some 100 to 200 bears are hunted in Alaska, 100 to 200 in Greenland and 500 to 600 in Canada.

The hunt in the M’Clintock Channel, which averaged 22 to 38 bears a year during the 1990s, ended abruptly in 2001 when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service stopped issuing permits to allow sport hunters to take trophies into the U.S from bears hunted in the M’Clintock Channel after May 31, 2000.

The Nunavut Wildlife Management Board and the Government of Nunavut followed with a moratorium on polar bear hunting in the M’Clintock Channel. The harvest of three bears a year recommended by the new MOU is expected to slightly delay the M’Clintock population’s recovery.