Only a few dozen Porcupine caribou have been seen in the Yukon and NWT this season. The majority of the herd is currently in Alaska and the animals are expected to winter there this year, said Mike Suitor, Northern regional biologist for Environment Yukon. The Yukon government has put a ban on caribou hunting along the Dempster Highway near the NWT/Yukon border for the eighth time in nine years. - photo courtesy of the Yukon Government

NWT/YUKON
Fresh porcupine caribou meat won't be on the menu this season for most residents in Inuvik, Fort McPherson and Aklavik.

Instead, community members are making do with hunting moose and rabbit, fishing for whitefish or eating last year's stores.

"We usually harvest (Porcupine caribou) in October just by the border of the NWT and the Yukon and this year we can't do it because there's none around so hunters just get the odd one or two on the highway," said Wilbert Firth, a Fort McPherson resident and member of the Porcupine caribou management board.

Porcupine caribou range across northeastern Alaska, the northern Yukon and NWT. Gwich'in and Inuvialuit hunters, including those from the NWT, have harvesting rights in the Yukon under the Porcupine Caribou Management Agreement.

The majority of the nearly 200,000-strong herd are currently in Alaska and the caribou will likely stay there for the winter, said Mike Suitor, Northern regional biologist for Yukon Department of Environment.

"Usually by the end of November, we know where the herd is going to winter," said Suitor. "They may move around a little bit but we don't expect to see really big movements."

Throughout the last decade, porcupine caribou have tended to favour Alaska but that shouldn't be cause for concern, said Suitor.

"Barren ground caribou are relatively unpredictable," he said. "In the decade before that we had very consistent visits by very large numbers of the herd into the Tombstone area and at that time they would have been wide open for hunting because there were lots of Porcupine caribou.

"The same time we were seeing all those caribou, the people in Arctic Village in Alaska had no caribou because they were all over here. So, right now they've been enjoying those caribou for the last few years."

Porcupine caribou numbers fell steadily in the 1990s and by 2001 the beasts numbered 123,000. Steps were taken to reverse the decline, including the implementation of a conservation plan, and by 2013 the herd's numbers had ballooned to a robust 197,000.

But other caribou populations continue to struggle. The Bluenose-East herd's numbers dropped to 68,000 in 2013 from an estimated 100,000 in 2010 and continue to decline. The Bathurst caribou population is also under threat.

With the Porcupine herd so far away, any caribou seen along the Dempster Highway near the NWT/Yukon border is a member of the Hart River herd, and hunters are being asked to leave them alone.

In an attempt to protect the Hart River caribou, Environment Yukon ordered a hunting closure in sub-zones along the Dempster Highway - North Fork Pass to Ogilvie River Bridge - earlier this month.

The Hart River herd is small, at an estimated 2,200 animals, and cannot sustain the same level of hunting, states a government website on the ban.

The closure, which is expected to continue until July 31, has been put into affect eight times in the past nine years.

The restriction would be lifted if a large number of porcupine caribou moved into the area.

However, it's "extremely unlikely" at this point given how many are in Alaska, said Suitor.

"In some years in that area the Porcupine caribou do come down onto the Dempster highway and they will come as far south as the Hart River range and they'll overlap with that herd.

"When that happens there are just so many porcupine caribou the chances of shooting a Hart caribou are very small," he explained.

But at the moment, he added, "you're not harvesting Porcupine caribou if you're down hunting caribou in that area."

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