View topic - Mysterious arctic caribou decline

Years ago I attended a lecture by a wildlife biologist that described how arctic wildlife populations often cycle in highs and lows that at times could be extreme. I can't recall whether this applied to caribou. The report below shows how poorly understood the dynamics of some wildlife species can be.

In related news, federal environment minister Jim Prentice is looking at a report dealing with woodland caribou and may issue a press release on boreal populations policy during the next several days. There doesn't seem to be any news online covering this yet.



http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ ... y/National

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Actually it was on CBC yesterday with the same headline, running titles at bottom of screen.


Thanks for the link, I was curious about the content.

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"Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night." Edgar Allen Poe

There is currently a proposal for an extensive uranium exploration program by Uravan in the Beverly Calving Grounds (around Garry Lake on the Back River). Previously, such proposals were rubber stamped, but this one has been forwarded to the Nunavut Impact Review Board for a full environmental assessment. Area includes exploration on 245 mining claims on 550,000 acres (all within the traditional calving ground of the Beverly Herd).

Components of the project (PDF) include: aerial geophysical surveys, ground geochemical sampling, diamond drilling, construction of permanent exploration camp and mobile temporary camp, ground transportation by sno-cat type vehicle, snow machines and all terrain vehicles, air transportation by fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, construction of airstrips and touchdown areas, transportation and storage of fuel and hazardous materials, water management for drilling sites and camps, sewage, greywater, and waste management at sites.

The Beverly and Qamanirjuaq Caribou Management Board has called for a number of steps to foster long term sustainability of herd and existing management regime:


For updates on the review process … you can visit here (the FTP site is the only way the Nunavut Impact Review Board communications widely to the public via the internet).

You can sign up for e-mail updates to the Garry Lake assessment by sending an e-mail to Leslie Payette, Manager Environmental Administration Nunavut Impact Review Board:

lpayette@nirb.ca

Thanks for keeping us in the loop frozentripper.

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Brian
http://www.JohnstonPursuits.ca

 

This can hardly be called a "mysterious decline"

There's nothing mysterious about it:
It's a well known fact that caribou need large tracts of intact wilderness to survive.
It wasn't too long ago, that the Temagami area was the traditional range of the woodland caribou. Logging, and industrial development pushed the caribou out of Temagami, into areas further North, in search of intact wilderness.

Today, logging in the boreal forest goes on almost without regulation. Massive clearcuts occur throughout the area, displacing those caribou herds that inhabit the boreal.

A perfect example of this mis-management can be seen in the Ogoki area, where biologists wrote what they call a "mosiac" that essentially completely decimates the entire forest over a period of time.

Now, the sad truth of the matter is, the Arctic is no longer the intact wilderness that it once was. Mineral exploration, diamond mines, etc... have broken up this once pristine wilderness area.

So these caribou will inevitably suffer the same fate as those in Temagami 100 years ago.

Will we never learn?

Good luck convincing a resource hungry world that Santa's Reindeer are more important that uranium to power the coming new proliferation of nuclear power plants - or more important than "harvesting" the dwindling world supply of wood products....

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Steve Boal

Most of the world's political, social, and environmental problems have the same root cause: human overpopulation. By 2050 or so, the world population is expected to reach nine billion.

email message from David Pelly follows.
Allan

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Hi,

I would only ask this in extraordinary circumstances. Would you consider sending this appeal, below, on to your list of contacts? NIRB’s decision on this application from Uravan will without doubt be precedent-setting. If we lose this one, the entire area will be riddled with similar projects in no time. (See numbers below, for a sense of what’s waiting in the wings.)

A flood of emails to NIRB will make a difference, I firmly believe. Deadline for input is Dec 12.

Thanks.

D.


-----Original Message-----
From: David Pelly [mailto:dpelly@sympatico.ca]
Sent: December 1, 2008 4:36 PM
To: Undisclosed Recipients
Subject: FW: Uravan Garry Lake Project, NIRB File 08EN037
Importance: High

Friends,

There is a crisis looming on the barrenlands. Population estimates indicate the Beverly caribou population has dropped by 98% in the past 14 years, since the last proper aerial survey. Some salient detail appears in my email below.



As this news arrives (in the press today across the country), the Nunavut Impact Review Board is considering an application from Uravan Minerals, for development of their uranium property right on the caribou calving ground, just south of Garry Lake (Back River). For details – if you need more – visit the NIRB website and look under ftp://ftp.nirb.ca/REVIEWS/CURRENT_REVIEWS/



I know there are a million and one issues demanding your attention. But for the sake of the barren ground caribou, and the wild spaces we all cherish, please write a short email to NIRB (lpayette@nirb.ca) this week, demanding that the Uravan application be denied. Believe it – your letter can make a difference.



Thanks for your help.



Best regards,

David



David F. Pelly

www.davidpelly.com







-----Original Message-----
From: David Pelly [mailto:dpelly@sympatico.ca]
Sent: December 1, 2008 4:12 PM
To: 'lpayette@nirb.ca'
Cc: 'Strahl.C@parl.gc.ca'; 'DShewchuk@gov.nu.ca'; 'Prentice.J@parl.gc.ca'
Subject: Uravan Garry Lake Project, NIRB File 08EN037



Please register my strong opposition to Uravan’s plans for mineral development on the calving grounds of the Beverly caribou. And in your deliberations, please take note of the following:



At the NWT Barren-ground Caribou Summit in 2007, delegates voted overwhelming in favour of establishing their first priority as “Protect the calving grounds in the NWT and Nunavut” and directed the GNWT to “Meet with Nunavut to begin discussions about protection calving grounds.”


Two weeks ago the GNWT revealed their evidence at a meeting of the BQCMB that “the numbers of adult female caribou (cows) seen on the Beverly calving ground during June systematic reconnaissance surveys dropped from 5,737 in 1994 to 93 in 2008, and that very few calves were seen during the 2008 survey – only 15 calves for every 100 cows. (In comparison, usually about 80 calves for every 100 cows are seen on the calving grounds of healthy barren-ground caribou herds near the peak of calving, as was the case with the Bathurst herd in June 2008.)”


As reported by CP, the CBC, The Globe and Mail, and elsewhere today, “The massive Beverly herd, which roams the tundra from northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan and well into the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, once numbered about 276,000 animals. But a just-released survey suggests the number of caribou cows on the calving grounds of the massive Beverly herd have fallen by a stunning 98 per cent over the last 14 years.”


In the past few years, while caribou numbers have been dropping, disruptive mineral exploration activity on the calving ground and the adjacent post-calving aggregation areas has risen dramatically. As of this month, there are 727 active mineral tenures (permits, claims and leases) on the Beverly calving ground. This level of industrial activity is clearly not sustainable.


Major mining companies – De Beers, Areva, and Cameco – have declared that they will no longer conduct activities on caribou calving and post-calving grounds in Nunavut, because they understand the implications of this activity.


The proposal before the NIRB at present is bound to set a precedent. It is essential that the NIRB send a clear signal to industry that mineral development on the calving and post-calving grounds is out of the question. To do otherwise is to accept the decline of the caribou population as unimportant to the people who depend on these animals, both physically and culturally – these caribou provide millions of dollars worth of meat annually to the residents of user-communities in Nunavut, NWT, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Not protecting caribou habitat also contradicts the broad desires of Canadians to see this iconic species and its habitat protected for future generations. The NIRB surely has a responsibility to do what it can to protect the caribou and caribou habitat.



While one cannot state categorically that the decline in caribou numbers is a direct result of industrial activity, we can be absolutely sure that it does not help the caribou, and that their recovery will be rendered next to impossible if their habitat is taken over by industrial activity. NIRB should now declare that this will not be permitted to occur – the only way to do that is to deny Uravan’s application.

Sincerely,

David Pelly

www.davidpelly.com

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A literal mind is a little mind. If it's not worth doing to excess, it's not worth doing at all. Good enough isn't.  None are so blind as those who choose not to see. (AJ)

I'm not a caribou expert, still, my first thoughts after seeing the title of the report was that climate warming was responsible. Polar bears are declining at the same time in the arctic and have been put on a species at risk list - the reason seems to be climate change and the change in the polar bears' environment making their survival more difficult. The rate of environmental change due to climate warming is greatest in polar areas with arctic residents and scientists reporting many obvious and observable effects.

It's noteworthy that Monte Hummel, the WWF''s caribou expert admits that the declines are not well understood. He recommends that industrial activity should be suspended until the science is more complete.

Here's an article from earlier this year, on the effects of climate change contributing to the decline.



http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/ ... c2a3eb52d3

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I agree, this is an urgent issue. Please read the comments by David Pelly above!! Alex Hall has also been actively involved in the issue. The jr. uranium mining companies had their proposals rejected for a second time along the upper Thelon River (Bayswater and Uravan), but they were rejected on cultural heritage grounds (and not ecological grounds). The Thelon Wildlife Sanctuary Management Plan is still outstanding, and serious effort has to be given to how to manage the area for long term interests.

While the NWT review board (MVEIRB) rejected the Thelon claims (Boomerang and Screech Lake), they approved an exploratory project on the Dubawnt (Crab Lake). The Nunavut Impact Review Board also approved a project by Bayswater last year in the Beverly Caribou Calving Grounds (08EN001), and without environmental review. So the sustainability and environmental questions are still very much outstanding, in flux, and are being decided "right now."

At a minimum, it is a very good idea to sign up to be on the e-mail distribution list for these assessments. That's one way regulators measure public interest in an issue. And another is to send in a letter. You would e-mail Leslie Payette for both:

lpayette@nirb.ca

For background on the Garry Lake proposal: SEE HERE


For more on climate change and caribou populations … this was an article that got a lot of attention back in the summer. And I posted on it here.

Note on 12 pm Dec. 12, 2008 deadline …

This is for comments on the Draft EIS Guidelines:

Copy of Draft EIS (PDF)
Announcement for Public Comments (PDF) ... posted Nov. 20, 2008.


I think it is always helps to provide materials relevant to the particular stage in the EA process. Once a EIS is finalized, I would expect public hearings and consultations to follow … but defining the scope of the assessment, in a lot of cases, is where the real action happens.

There's lots going on with caribou populations in the North at the moment, and this is a follow up story yesterday from Bob Weber. Climate change, hunting pressure, and industrial activities are highlighted as concerns.

Mysterious? The only mystery to me is that anyone finds it "mysterious".

The caribou have been on the governments Species At Risk list at least since '02 as threatened.

The Nature Canada report from Apr of this year grades the governments response to the problem. It isn't very encouraging.

The caribou are only one of 100's of species in this country "at risk". SARA list's some 490 odd while COSEWIC lists 585 ! And they are just the ones we know about.

As long as we continue to put the economy 1st nature will continue to suffer decline. The real "mystery" is why, even with overwhelming evidence of the causes, we fail to act.

Don't overlook this line from the quoted article:

"Caribou herds have always fluctuated, sometimes wildly. The George River herd in Arctic Quebec grew from as few as 5,000 animals in the early 1960s to 700,000 by the 1990s (although it's now shrinking)."

The population implosion is definitely concerning. But we don't know the cause any more than we know the why the George river herd grew 140X over a 30 year period.

I really have to take exception to the comparison to the cod fishery. Last I checked there weren't any ungulate trawlers out there sweeping the tundra clean of caribou.

Wildlife management is not a simple thing. Nor is it very satisfying when the most effective answer typically turns out to be not to do anything.

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No, your other left!
Loon Island Outdoors
"Like" my Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/LoonIslandOutdoors

"Mysterious? The only mystery to me is that anyone finds it "mysterious".

The caribou have been on the governments Species At Risk list at least since '02 as threatened."

This refers to the woodland caribou subspecies, not barrenland caribou. They are not "threatened" at the moment, thank heavens. However the recent declines are of concern. But keep in mind that caribou herds do exhibit fluctuations, roughly at human lifetime intervals, according to Inuit traditional knowledge studies I have read. Also they can exhibit absolutely phenomenal rates of population growth (over 20% per year), simply astounding for a large mammal.

Daniel.

Garry Lake Project Update (Please See David Pelly's note above).

Public relations are in full swing at Uravan. After a protracted land use permit process in 2008, company was told it needed to have a full environmental review for its exploratory project, which is located within the calving grounds of the Beverly caribou herd. The preliminary screening review received over 200 submissions from paddlers, environmental groups, wildlife management boards, government and Inuit representatives, and more.

In 2009, Uravan continued to operate it's unlicensed site and a water license inspector found a 1,000 litres fuel leak at the site from 112 drums of fuel. You need a permit for storage of fuel, camp construction materials, waste disposal, and diamond drilling equipment (which were also found at site).

CBC, Northern News Services, and Nunavummiut Makitagunarningit, an new Inuit uranium mining public education group based in Iqaliut, report on story:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/20 ... -lake.html

http://www.nnsl.com/northern-news-servi ... 1_10c.html

http://makikuranium.wordpress.com/2009/ ... lake-site/

Despite fuel cache, leaks, diamond drilling equipment, and assurances of clean-up (it received an extension because it was unable to meet initial deadline for clean up of illegal site), Uravan says it wishes to discontinue it's operations at Garry Lake (according to CBC). Don't want to state the obvious, but seeing is believing.