IQALUIT - A national scientific advisory board has recommended that the federal government place the Peary caribou on the endangered species list.

The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada has recommended placing Peary caribou, such as these on Melville Island, on the endangered species list. - photo courtesy of John Nagy/GNWT Population trends: 1961 48,484 1974 27,190 1985 20,520 1990 10,919 1997 7,313 2001 7,890 Source: COSEWIC Assessment and Update Status Report on the Peary caribou and Barren-ground caribou, 2004

In a letter to the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board, dated May 4, Minister of the Environment John Baird said that he would take into account the assessment made by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) and initiate the process to have the Peary caribou listed as endangered. Such actions have many in the high Arctic crying foul.

"The Peary Caribou is not endangered," said Larry Audlaluk, a director with the Iviq Hunters and Trappers Association in Grise Fiord. "The cycle of Peary caribou in the high Arctic is not like your regular caribou in other parts of the north."

Due to the landscape it inhabits on the high Arctic islands, Peary caribou have fewer places to graze and must compete for food with muskox. According to Audlaluk, any decrease in the number of caribou is part of a natural cycle.

"The COSEWIC assessment... is based on the best available information. That information comes from government reports, from Aboriginal traditional knowledge, and community knowledge," said Jeff Hutchings, chair of COSEWIC. The organization based its recommendation on three surveys that were done on the Peary caribou in 1961, 1972-1974, and 1997.

In the last three and a half years, the federal government has accepted COSEWIC's recommendations on species at risk 85 per cent of the time, Hutchings said.

The COSEWIC Assessment and Update Status Report on the Peary Caribou states that all populations of the Peary caribou have never been surveyed in one year. The numbers obtained in a count from one survey area is projected onto other islands to get an estimate. Surveyors have used different methods to conduct their count, with some counting calves and others not.

According to COSEWIC, the Peary caribou population has decreased by 72 per cent since 1984. The decrease is blamed on a warming climate.

"The Peary caribou has never been big in population," Audlaluk said. "What really hurts me is when traditional knowledge is not taken seriously,"

Community consultations have been conducted by Environment Canada staff in Grise Fiord and other communities who hunt the Peary caribou. Audlaluk said that the government is just going through the motions.

"Inuit ideas, Inuit knowledge doesn't mean anything to them, not right now," he said. "We have always been natural conservationists."

While COSEWIC has recommended the government place the Peary caribou on the endangered species list, there is no guarantee that it will happen. COSEWIC is only one of several assessments taken into account by Environment Canada when designating a species as endangered, threatened, or of special concern. Environment Canada also conducts its own analysis of the economic impacts of a listing.

"There is a whole series of steps that have to be taken before the federal government will make a decision to list or not list," said Michele Brenning, director general of the Canadian Wildlife Service. The regulatory process could take until January 2008.

If the Peary caribou are to be listed as endangered, prohibitions on their harvest would only apply on federal land, Brenning said. A recent press release from Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated states that under the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement harvesting restrictions cannot be placed on Inuit hunters.

In the event that the animal is listed endangered, the federal government would develop a recovery strategy.

"There's provisions in the act to allow for continued sustainable harvest," Brenning said.

Representatives from the Nunavut Department of Environment and the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board were not available for comment.