Peary caribou and barren-ground caribou COSEWIC assessment and status report: chapter 3

Introduction

At the height of the last glaciation of the Pleistocene, about 20 000 years before present (ybp), the Laurentide ice sheet covered the mainland and some of the southern islands including Victoria Island and Baffin Island, while smaller ice caps covered Melville Island, Bathurst Island and the islands to the northeast (Pielou 1991). Sea level was about 150 m lower than now. What would become Banks Island and parts of the western Queen Elizabeth Islands were polar desert (as they are now), contiguous with Beringia (Figure 1) (Adams and Faure 2003). The caribou of Beringia--progenitors of today’s Alaskan and northern Canadian subspecies--were not isolated from those of the High Arctic. 

Figure 1. Beringia about 18 000 ybp (from Pielou 1991).

Figure 1.  Beringia about 18 000 ybp (from Pielou 1991).

By 13 000 years ago, Banks Island was separate from the mainland, while part of Melville Island, which was connected by land to Prince Patrick Island, as well as some smaller islands to the northeast, had also become ice free (Pielou 1991). Rising water levels isolated caribou populations from those in Beringia and, to some extent, from each other, although they could still swim or walk across winter ice. After the rapid warming that marked the beginning of the Holocene, about 10 000 ybp, came an even warmer interval of 3000 to 4000 years of to 4° C warmer than now (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 1990). During that time, warmer weather resulted in more extensive open water in winter (Dyke et al. 1996), isolating Arctic islands caribou even more than now. Although the caribou were relatively isolated, they enjoyed better habitat because the vegetation changed from polar desert to dry tundra (Figure 1) (Adams and Faure 2003).

For the Inuit and Inuvialuit the caribou have been there as long as they have. They are part of the landscape, members of the spirit world, and providers of food, clothes, and tools. Yet, as this COSEWIC status report is written, the extinction of Peary caribou seems possible.

The first written record of Peary caribou was the skin of a “white deer” that the famous Dene statesman, Matonabbee, gave to the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1774 or 1775. Matonabbee guided Samuel Hearne from Hudson’s Bay to the mouth of the Coppermine River during 1771–1772. Within a century, some of the caribou of the Arctic islands were in trouble. The introduction of firearms made it easier to kill these docile animals. By about 1924, the Dolphin and Union herd had gone from around 100 000 to essentially extinct. In 1973 another crisis loomed, this time caused by climate: freezing fall rain covered virtually the entire range in the western Queen Elizabeth Islands with a glaze of ice, locking up the winter forage. The caribou population there crashed in the winter and spring of 1973–1974 by 49% from its 1973 level and was down about 89% from 1961 (Tener 1963, Milleret al. 1977a).

Peary caribou are difficult to census in their vast and remote range. Their inter-island movements are not easily monitored. Documenting their behaviour and relationships with habitats, competitors, and predators requires dealing with the difficulties of working in the Arctic. Rarely has a population’s entire range been surveyed at once; the whole subspecies, never. As a consequence, even intensive surveys, with high precision for the areas that were covered, may have missed substantial portions of the populations. Also, some authors have reported estimates for total caribou, while others have reported only adult, or 1+ year-old caribou, and those numbers cannot be directly compared. This problem was exacerbated by surveys at different seasons, when the proportions of calves were changing because of new births or deaths. These uncertainties and inconsistencies presented difficulties in establishing trends.

To establish historic and recent (3 generations, or about 21 years) population trends, the report writer assembled the available records of surveys and, in most cases, contacted the authors to sort out inconsistencies as noted above. The report writer extrapolated trends between major survey years using the exponential model:

Nt=Nt-1+Nt-1Rmax

where N is the number of individuals in the population at a given point in time, t, increasing at a constant annual rate, Rmax. I then summed trends in local populations to give trends for each population. The current population, represented by the most recent survey results, was then compared with the first reported estimate and with the 1980 populations to arrive at trends over 3 generations (21 years).

This method is imperfect for the following reasons: (1) some trends did not fit an exponential model, so that intermediate estimates between starting and ending points were under- or over-represented; (2) some inconsistencies in the resulting data set remained, for example, when different authors reported different estimates for the same population; (3) the decision as to which starting and ending points to use when several estimates were available in a given period was somewhat arbitrary, and influenced the results; and, (4) when the first and last reported estimates of different local populations of the same population were in different years, they were nevertheless summed to arrive at the “first count” and “last count,” respectively, for the population. The original survey estimates and trend calculations are presented in Appendix 1.

Peary caribou taxonomy is better known now than for the last assessment, but is still incomplete. There is still no collection of specimens sufficiently complete to measure morphometric and pelage variability in all parts of their range. Molecular methods to discern genetic relationships have been applied, but, the distribution of samples is incomplete and important results are still unpublished.

“In this report, “local population” refers to a definable portion of a population, based on some geographic feature such as their summer or winter range, calving grounds, or migration route. “Local population” is approximately synonymous with “herd” as applied traditionally to migratory caribou elsewhere in Canada (Thomas and Gray 2002).

Inuvialuit in the western Arctic and Inuit in the eastern Arctic, through their conservation organizations (such as Hunters and Trappers Organizations), have newly recognized responsibilities for some aspects of wildlife management, such as harvest allocation. Through oral dissemination of qaujimajatuqangit (Inuit/Inuvialuit traditional knowledge), they may have an understanding of caribou behaviour and biology that complements or supplements that available from scientific publications. Territorial and federal government policies have begun requiring that qaujimajatuqangit be incorporated into wildlife management decisions (Government of the Northwest Territories 1993, Government of Canada 1995).

The cultural knowledge, values, and understanding of local residents can enhance scientific inquiry, not only for the factual content of qaujimajatuqangit, but for the greater insight it confers to interpretation of the data (Wolfeet al. 1992, Berkes 1993, Dwyer 1994, Berkes 1998, Deurden and Kuhn 1998). Several authors have proposed methods of incorporating qaujimajatuqangit into environmental decision-making (Gunn et al. 1988, Freeman 1992, Johnson 1992, Stevens 1994). Usher (2000) reviewed these and offered the following criteria and procedures for traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) to be used in environmental management:

  1. TEK must be comprehensible and testable.
  2. There is a need to differentiate between observation and inference or association.
  3. Intermediaries trained in social sciences who have the support of the holders of TEK must document TEK in an organized manner, usually requiring interviews.

For this report, the following types of qaujimajatuqangit were reviewed:

  • interviews by the author with representatives of hunters’ and trappers’ organizations and government agencies in Resolute Bay and Inuvik;
  • second-hand observations and opinions cited as personal communications in scientific publications and reports;
  • scientific publications and reports in which qaujimajatuqangit was collected through formal interviews by Inuktitut-speaking Inuit or Inuvialuit and summarized or transcribed by the collectors  (e.g. Adjun 1993, Elias 1993, Ferguson and Messier 1997, Nunavut Tusaavut Inc. 1997, Ferguson et al. 1998);
  • workshops in which there was substantial Inuit or Inuvialuit representation (Gunn et al. 1986, e.g. Gunn et al. 1998); and
  • scientific reports that were co-authored by Inuit or Inuvialuit (e.g. Gunn et al. 1986, Gunn et al. 1988, Ferguson et al. 2001).

In addition to these attributable sources, many of the surveys that provided data essential to the scientific studies on which this review is based used local Inuit or Inuvialuit as observers (e.g. F.F. Slaney & Co. Ltd. 1975a, b, Gunn and Dragon 1998, Miller 1998, Larter and Nagy 2000b, Ferguson et al. 2001, Gunn and Dragon 2002). Their contributions, usually recognized in the Acknowledgements sections, can be assumed to have contributed to the understanding derived from the study and reflected in the reports.  This status assessment is an update of Miller (1991), also published as Miller (1990b).

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