Peary caribou to be protected

nunavut: But Inuit plan to fight adding animals to endangered list

Randy Boswell, CanWest News Service

Published: Wednesday, June 20, 2007

The federal government is set to lock horns with Canada's Inuit over the future of the Peary caribou, a struggling species found only in this country's Arctic region and the focus of years of wrangling over whether to officially declare it endangered.

Now, Environment Minister John Baird has advised Nunavut wildlife officials that with climate change disastrously altering the habitat of the distinctively diminutive, light-coloured caribou -- the population of which has plummeted from 50,000 to less than 8,000 in the past 40 years -- Canada is taking steps to formally add the animal to its list of species on the brink of extinction.

The government also plans to list two populations of the more southerly barren-ground caribou as "a species of special concern" and a rare moss, Porsild's Bryum, as threatened.


"Taking into account what is best for the conservation of these species, I intend to initiate the listing process for . . . Peary caribou as endangered," Baird wrote to the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board in a May letter obtained by CanWest News Service.

But the minister's letter has prompted an uproar in the north, where hunting the Peary caribou has been a central part of Inuit culture for centuries. Several Arctic communities and organizations are poised to fight Baird's plan -- just as they did with one of his predecessors, former Liberal environment minister Stephane Dion.

A spokeswoman with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the corporation that represents Inuit interests under Nunavut's land-claim agreement with the federal government, said NTI officials were preparing a statement yesterday and would oppose Baird's effort to officially list the animal as endangered.

The NWMB disputes federal estimates of the size and health of the Peary caribou population, believes aboriginal knowledge of the species has been ignored and has argued that the population should be divided into four sub-groups with separate management strategies.

The plight of the Peary caribou, though, is also gaining national and international attention from scientists and environmental advocates.

Experts widely agree that the animals are starving to death from a lack of lichens, their primary food source, as warming temperatures increasingly leave the Peary caribou's traditional snow-covered feeding grounds encased in layers of ice.

COSEWIC (Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada), the federal body responsible for giving scientific advice to the government about species at risk, recommended in 2004 that the Peary caribou be designated endangered.

"Voluntary restrictions on hunting by local people are in place, but have not stopped population declines," COSEWIC concluded.


© The Vancouver Province 2007

I'll be the first to admit that the population is small and always has been. But the killer factor is fall icing on the vegetation which several times has been the factor in die offs. Of course, now everything is blamed on global warming! Hell, this is the coldest summer we've seen for years, everything is 3 weeks late. My caribou camp is still surrounded by ice, and most years we can get in by this date on floats.

The Inuuit a few years back installed their own moratorium on hunting the Peary caribou in recognition that they were drastically down in numbers, so really, calling for them to be placed on the endangered list isn't going to help.

~Arctic~