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Hanging on for survival Southampton Island caribou herd still has a chance
Darrell Greer
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, June 12, 2013
CORAL HARBOUR
There's renewed hope the caribou herd on Southampton Island may be stabilizing following a survey on the herd this past month.
Biologist Mitch Campbell said reports out of Coral Harbour indicate the brucellosis disease within the Southampton Island caribou herd seems to be in decline. - NNSL file photo
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It's the third straight year a survey was done on the Southampton herd, at an average cost of about $150,000.
The survey was done in a single engine fixed-wing aircraft, with four dedicated observers.
Kivalliq biologist for the Government of Nunavut (GN) Mitch Campbell said he was pleasantly surprised to see the herd, seemingly, stabilizing.
He said it appears the actions taken by the GN and Aiviit Hunters and Trappers Organization (HTO) are helping the herd.
"The herd is still down from the 2011 survey, which is the one we're going to use as the base point going forward," said Campbell.
"We weren't able to survey every area of the island in 2012, so we can't use those numbers as a base point."
The 2013 survey shows the herd down about 1,000 animals from 2011, which Campbell describes as "pretty good" compared to what they saw in 2012.
He said the next step is to plan what needs to be done going forward.
"We'll have people in Coral this week to talk about what we need to do next.
"We still need to maintain the situation and, because we still see a drop, we may have to adjust the total allowable harvest (TAH) a bit, but we need to talk to the community before we do that.
"There were about 7,900 caribou in 2011 and now we're down to about 7,000."
Campbell said people in Coral are reporting disease levels among the tuktu seem to have dropped significantly.
He said there's a possibility some new animals may have come onto the island.
"We're going to try and look into that through genetics, but, so far, there's no direct proof of it.
"A recovery in the pregnancy rate could account for the turnaround, combined with the restricted harvest and commercial-hunt cutback.
"Bringing the TAH in has really eased up on the number of animals being harvested on the island.
"A TAH of 1,000 animals was requested by the HTO in 2012, and has been in place for the past year.
Campbell said following talks this week, the plan is to have the quota adjusted and a number allocated by July 1.
He said since they're still seeing a decline since 2011, he'd like to see the TAH adjusted down a bit more.
"That's a recommendation, not a command.
"With the herd, based on what we've seen, beginning to stabilize, caution has to be the order of the day until we can double-check everything.
"Hopefully, everyone will exercise caution until we get the rest of the information in to make a better decision.
"But we're a lot more optimistic we can save this herd than we were a year ago."
Campbell said May's survey shows the measures taken have helped the herd by stopping the huge, fast decline they were seeing.
But, he said, you can't take results from one year and say everything's good.
"We have to stay vigilant in our efforts until we're sure this is the new trend, but it's the first really hopeful sign we've seen and kudos to the Coral HTO for it.
"The HTO pushed to have a restriction placed on the harvest, and that shows a HTO that made a difference, as well as the people of Coral, for the most part.
"It's been hard for everyone, but it's paying off."
Campbell said the amount of brucellosis in the herd has dropped dramatically by reports coming out of Coral.
He said that could be a result of the disease leaving the population, or animals from the mainland coming across the ice bridge this year.
"I started hearing about this early in the season, so disease was almost certainly playing the lead role in the problems we were seeing.
"This survey saw more calves coming into the population, which suggests the disease is slowly going out of the herd.
"We're hoping there's been a bit of a turn, but it's early days and not the time to throw caution to the wind.
"We have to wait until we see a positive trend, before getting back in business in terms of normal harvesting and removing restrictions."
Very little is known about brucellosis in tuktu.
Campbell said biologists suspect caribou are able to build up a resistance to the disease, but they don't know for sure that's the case.
But, he said, you can partner that with the fact every other caribou herd in North America has been living and evolving with that disease.
"My gut feeling is they eventually develop some sort of resistance to that disease.
"Coral caribou came from Coats Island originally, completely separated from any chance of getting that disease because of the location, so they were more susceptible to it.
"But as animals come in with a higher resistance to it, they're going to have young born with resistance, so we believe the resistance will be built over time, but we don't know for certain with the disease in caribou.
"There's still a bit of a mystery involved with it."
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