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RANKIN INLET
In last week's edition, Kivalliq News was told peregrine falcon chicks in the Rankin Inlet area face historic low survival rates due to a change in rain patterns in the region, according to data collected by researchers over the course of three decades.

Laurent Nikolaiczuk sets up a rain gauge at Site 47, near Rankin Inlet - Tim Edwards/NNSL photo

Kivalliq News met with field technicians Laurent Nikolaiczuk, Alejandro Bravo and guide Andy Aliyak for a beautiful but windy morning in the field on Aug. 7.

With research gear and a shotgun loaded onto ATVs, the team set out northwest on the road out of Rankin Inlet, eventually making it to Site 47, one of 11 active nests the team monitors.

The season started out with less than 40 active sites, but as the summer season wraps up, those numbers have dwindled. The total number of sites monitored over the past three decades numbers around 80.

Being good hosts to the media, the team travelled in one four-person group and visited two active sites, rather than the usual overland trip in which the technicians split up and most of the time try to visit as many as eight sites in a day.

The technicians got to work at Site 47, gently marking three chicks with coloured markers to denote their estimated age, judging by size and weight. Aliyak sat back and looked up at the mother peregrine falcon, who had been, quite understandably, hovering and squawking angrily at the four intruders.

"Sit back and watch the airshow," Aliyak said, remarking in wonder at the raptor's prowess in the sky.

Nikolaiczuk and Bravo strapped a motion-detecting field camera to a stand to capture the goings-on of the nest. These cameras can record around 8,000 pictures the technicians then sift through, sometimes capturing nothing of interest, but now and then capturing a polar bear or fox rooting through the nest for a snack. A watch-battery-sized device is placed at the scene to record the temperature on site, and a container is set up to gauge rainfall.

In no time at all, it seemed, the team was done and the nest was left to its doting mother, free from intrusion for another week or so. The team spaces out the visits to cause minimal disturbance.

"Quick," Aliyak said. "These guys are pros."

The 57-year-old guide has been involved off and on with the project since 1997, when it was run by different researchers.

He was the only one who responded to a radio ad calling for local guides, a fitting job for a man who's been on the land since he was 10 years old, and has kept up with the seasonal job when time has permitted.

"It's the best job I ever took because it's an outside job," Aliyak said.

He's been able to hunt caribou during the trips, lately - an added bonus to everyone on the team come lunchtime.

"That doesn't slow nothing down, really," Aliyak said. "It's not only a good job, it's important. It needs to be done. From the years I first started out, we didn't know nothing."

The second stop, at Site 58, proved to be much more than an airshow. The technicians precariously stepped out onto a ledge on a cliff-face, perhaps 30 metres above ground and going pretty much straight down. The researchers contended with two dive-bombing peregrine falcons while they set up equipment at the site.

"Wear a helmet but try not to let them hit it. We don't want them to get hurt," said Nikolaiczuk, explaining the best way to ward the raptors off is to extend one's arm out at them as they swoop; this causes them to change course and reassess the situation.

The data collected by these researchers paints a clear picture of the species' survival, and the factors surrounding it. That data is critical in a world where the politically-charged climate change debate is surrounded by a haze of rhetoric and half-facts.

As well, a healthy population of peregrine falcons may present economic opportunities for Nunavummiut. The raptors are popular birds in the field of falconry.

The team also studies what prey is available for the falcons, including siksiks, larks, geese and eider. For now until the end of the season, which is fast approaching, the scientists will continue collecting data on chick survival. A Baffin Island project and another in Iglulik are recent additions to the Arctic Raptors project, but it will take a long time before they have data to see trends such as those being examined in Rankin Inlet.

Though survival rates are low in the Rankin area, the species seems healthy, according to lead researcher Alastair Franke. The number of couples arriving each year in the area to breed hasn't decreased. They were having on average 0.65 less young in 2002-09 than in 1982-89.

The raptor population seems to still be healthy, but its success at breeding in the Arctic could be an indicator of the possible effects a changing climate - in this case, a slight temperature raise causing rain patterns shifting from drizzle and light showers to more full-on storms in a summer season - can have on the survival of wildlife.

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