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A casualty of this year's anthrax outbreak in the Mackenzie Bison Range lies close to Highway 3 near Fort Providence while live members of the herd stand in the background. - photo courtesy of the GNWT Department of Environment and Natural Resources

NORTHWEST TERRITORIES
The worst anthrax outbreak on record in the NWT has decimated the Mackenzie bison herd, although no fresh carcasses have been found within the last two weeks, News/North has learned.

"I'm still trying to figure out what actually happened. It's a huge amount of bison that went down," said Wayne Sabourin, chief of the Dehgahgotie First Nation based in Fort Providence.

As of press time, 431 bison carcasses had been found in the Mackenzie Bison Range, a region stretching from around Fort Providence to near Behchoko. The majority of the carcasses - 371 - have been found in the Deh Cho Region of the range, near Fort Providence, said Judy McLinton, spokesperson for the GNWT Department of Environment and Natural Resources. In this region, most of the carcasses were found along the highway, at Mills Lake, near the foot of the Horn Plateau, and near Mink Lake, Slavey Point and Sulphur Bay. There were also 18 carcasses found along the highway in the North Slave Region as of press time, said McLinton.

All animals affected in this year's anthrax outbreak were part of the Mackenzie Bison herd. When last surveyed in March of this year, before the outbreak, there were approximately 1,440 animals, said McLinton. There is another survey of the herd scheduled for March 2013.

"It's an environmental disease," McLinton said. "What happens with anthrax is there are spores that are already in the ground. How long they've been there, we don't know - hundreds, maybe thousands of years.

"You need the right environmental conditions for this kind of a thing, and what that is is rainy and cool followed by very hot, which we had in that area."

The spores need the animal to reproduce, which is why ENR personnel along with contractors from communities near the carcasses have been commissioned to incinerate all carcasses found.

"The carcasses we've been finding have been old but we want to find those carcasses and incinerate them and incinerate the ground to get rid of the spores," said McLinton.

Because the area surrounding Fort Providence is the most affected by this year's outbreak, community members have become involved in the incineration process, working alongside ENR experts, said Sabourin.

"I give them great credit for what they're doing. It's a huge undertaking for a small community like Providence to deal with a situation like this," he said.

The reason that bison are the most affected is because anthrax spores tend to be located in flat, meadow areas where bison tend to graze and lie in the dirt. Along with the 431 bison carcasses found so far, four moose carcasses were also discovered within the last two weeks, said McLinton, though it has not been confirmed that those animals were exposed to anthrax spores.

Anthrax spores can enter the system through inhalation, eating contaminated dirt or meat, or contact with cut or broken skin. Humans travelling in the affected area are not at risk unless they approach and touch the bison carcasses, said McLinton.

This year's outbreak has been particularly acute because the spores were released in June, about one month earlier than they have previously been recorded. Once the spores have been released, outbreaks tend to continue until heavy fall rains sets in, she said.

To date, roughly 30 per cent of the Mackenzie Bison herd has been killed by anthrax this season, said McLinton.

How this will affect the number of hunting tags issued this year has yet to be resolved and is currently being looked in to.

"We'll be discussing that with the management partners," she said. "It could have an affect on bison tags, on hunting this year."

The annual bison hunt takes place from October to February to avoid calving season, so residents are not particularly concerned about the hunt yet, said Sabourin. Residents who live in smaller surrounding communities or in rural areas seem more concerned than those who live in the hamlet, he said.

"It's more of a concern for people who are outside of the community. They are more scared of the outbreak and they want more information on the anthrax," he said.

Resident hunting has been put on hold for now, but the community has not been informed of any changes to this year's hunting quota, said Sabourin.

Last year, 20 more resident tags went out to community members for a total of 60 tags, he said.

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