by Ian Elliot
Northern News Services

NNSL (Oct 20/97) - If you want to know where the caribou roam, you can collar a cow. Or you can just ask an elder.

A study released this week on the huge Bathurst caribou herd found a remarkable degree of agreement between traditional and scientific knowledge.

The report was prepared as part of the West Kitikmeot/Slave Study, which is conducting a five-year series of studies on wildlife in which scientific projects have a traditional knowledge component.

The director of the study says he was not at all surprised at the close correlation.

"No, not at all," study director John McCallum said Thursday.

"When you've got people who have been passing on this information for generations, you would have to expect that they would know the routes caribou use or where they cross rivers."

If the two streams of knowledge had not corresponded, he would have wondered about the validity of the study, he said.

"I'm glad to see it was so close. If they had been saying two entirely different things, I really would have had concerns about them."

In the scientific half of the study, a number of caribou were collared and their movements tracked. Researchers found that they travelled the routes that elders, using knowledge passed down through generations, said they did.

According to Dogrib elders in the North Slave region, caribou and the Dogrib have traditionally met each other in the fall in various places -- Snare Lakes, Lac de Gras, Mesa Lake and as far into the barrenlands as Contwoyto Lake, 500 kilometres from Rae.

A year-long satellite monitoring program of caribou in the 350,000-strong herd revealed that the animals move along the corridors that the elders identified, but also that they do not travel as far south as they did decades ago.

Scientists found the caribou crossed water and entered and exited the treeline where elders said they would.

The caribou gave birth to their young in early June near Bathurst Inlet some 700 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife. Their migration took them towards Great Slave Lake and northwest in the direction of Great Bear Lake, and returned through some of the most resource-rich areas in the territory, covering a range of 250,000 square kilometres.

The caribou migration route and birthing grounds also brings them near or through areas currently being explored or developed for diamonds and metals.

A study is now under way in which elders and scientists are evaluating the best ways to keep caribou away from the mines.