Chief Ed Sangris of the Yellowknives Dene says aboriginal hunters are being unjustly blamed for the decline of caribou herds. - NNSL file photo |
Too much blame on aboriginal hunters
Yellowknives Dene chief says GNWT needs to develop long-term management plan for Bathurst herd
Cody Punter
Northern News Services
Published Friday, November 28 2014
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
The Dettah chief of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation says aboriginal hunters are shouldering too much blame for the decline of the Bathurst caribou herd ahead of a decisive meeting on caribou management being held today.
Environment and Natural Resources Minister Michael Miltenberger has been meeting with aboriginal leaders from across the territory over the last few months, after it was reported the Bathurst herd has dwindled to an estimated 15,000 animals since it was recorded as being 470,000 strong in 1986.
Today's meeting is a follow-up to a meeting held Nov. 7 that failed to reach consensus after running out of time.
Although the outcome of today's meetings remains to be seen, Miltenberger has publicly stated that a total ban on the Bathurst herd is being considered. Further limits on harvesting from the Bluesone-East herd, whose population is also declining, are also being debated.
"They're putting all the blame on aboriginal hunters," Chief Ed Sangris told Yellowknifer on Wednesday.
"It seems like everyone is else is benefiting except us."
Since a steep decline in the Bathurst herd's population numbers in 2010, harvesting from the herd has been limited to 300 tags per year, divided evenly between the Yellowknives Dene and the Tlicho.
Despite the sacrifices band members have made by harvesting fewer caribou, Sangris said the territorial government has done little to mitigate other factors contributing to the caribou decline. Those other factors include, in particular, mining development on Chief Drygeese Territory.
According to Sangris, the Yellowknives agreed to limit their harvesting of Bathurst caribou based on an understanding that the territorial government would come up with both a short-term and a long-term management plan for the herd.
"We haven't seen any of those plans yet," said Sangris. "We made sacrifices, we limited our harvest for the last three years and still this government doesn't do an adequate job of management (or producing) the conservation plans they said they wanted to develop."
"I don't think the government has a handle on how to manage its conservation program."
According to Department of Environment and Natural Resources spokesperson Judy McLinton, the GNWT is currently formulating a Bathurst caribou range plan. A working group consisting of mining companies, aboriginal governments and the Government of Nunavut was established in 2013.
"The purpose of the range plan is to deal with cumulative effects on that range," she said.
Among other things, the working group is using data compiled through the "caribou monitoring blueprint" which was set-up through the cumulative impact monitoring program set up by the federal government in 2011.
The program, which has been managed by the GNWT since it took over the management of lands and resources this spring, has been mapping the impact of disturbances, such as mining and forest firess, on caribou migration patterns.
The program spent $660,000 to support caribou monitoring in the NWT in 2013-14, according to its manager Julian Kanigan. Even though more funding has been directed toward caribou monitoring since 2011, Kanigan said there are still gaps in the data that need to be addressed.
"Our mandate as a program is to understand cumulative impact, but in order to do that you need baseline data and in a lot of cases we don't have that data. So in a lot of cases we're taking steps to make sure that baseline monitoring happens," Kanigan said.
Miltenberger declined to comment further on the caribou situation until after today's meeting.
David Giroux, a Deninu Ku'e band member who has lived in Dettah since 1991, says aboriginal leaders shouldn't be so surprised that the mines are contributing to the decline of the herds.
Giroux said the fact that the Yellowknives Dene and the Tlicho have signed impact benefit agreements with the mining companies, which pay out a lump sum to the bands, makes the aboriginal governments complicit.
"They made that compromise already,"said Giroux. "They needed jobs so bad, and training and contracts and they agreed for that IBA payment too, which is good, nothing wrong with that. But every day people have to eat and a lot of the caribou is gone."
Although Giroux is not Yellowknives Dene, his wife and son are both members of the band. According to Giroux, they each received impact benefit agreement payments of $250 last year, which works out to less than $1 a day. Given the high cost of food, Giroux said the payments do not make up for the inability to hunt.
If an all-out ban happens, Giroux said the GNWT should step in to compensate families to make up the extra cost in food they will incur.
"Whether they put a ban in place or not, people still need to eat," said Giroux.
