Officials set to take polar bear MOUs on tour

MIRIAM HILL

A group of officials is set to begin a series of community visits aimed at tweaking Nunavut’s latest polar bear memoranda-of-understanding — community agreements that will be used by government to set hunting quotas and regulations.

In Nunavut, polar bear MOUs have been developed by working groups to make sure that the number of polar bears killed by people each year is sustainable.

Over the past year, the group, made up of representatives from Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., regional wildlife organizations, the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board and the Department of Sustainable Development, met to discuss community concerns and identify the best approaches to polar bear management in Nunavut.

Some draft documents, including a chart showing polar bear tag distribution for the years up to 2004, were released during a wildlife symposium for hunters and trappers associations and regional wildlife organizations in Iqaluit last month.

The last MOUs were signed in 1996. The latest one won’t be finalized until each regional wildlife organization and community gets a chance to look at them and offer comments.

Mitch Taylor, senior polar bear biologist with the Department of Sustainable Development, explained that regional wildlife organizations have the final say on bear quotas and that the memoranda won’t be complete until officials — from DSD, the Kitikmeot Hunters and Trappers Organization, the Keewatin Wildlife Board, the Qikiqtaaluk Wildlife Board, NTI and NWMB — have a chance to speak with community members who often have information and ideas to add.

“Every community adds value,” Taylor said.

The group will spend two days in each community explaining the MOUs and how they fit within the land claim.

Relevant information on bear populations will be discussed and questions answered about the information collected, and its reliability. The draft MOUs will be revised as necessary in each community.

Since they will change with each meeting, at the end of the process the group will prepare a final draft and fax it to the appropriate regional and local hunters organizations and wildlife officers.

The consultations will begin in the Kitikmeot, Taylor said, because hunters in the Gulf of Boothia have noticed an increase in bears and want new quotas set for the next hunting season.

They’ll visit Repulse Bay, Hall Beach and Igloolik on the same trip. They’ll go to the other Baffin communities in January and to the rest of the Kivalliq region in February and March.

The MOUs are not regulations, Taylor explained, but regulations are developed from the MOUs.

Once signed by the communities and the relevant regional wildlife organizations, the MOUs then go to the minister of Sustainable Development and regulations are formulated.

The regulations are then reviewed and approved by the NWMB before being communicated to HTAs and hunters.