Patrick White
Dettah, NWT — From Wednesday's Globe and Mail Published on Tuesday, May. 04, 2010 9:51PM EDT Last updated on Tuesday, May. 04, 2010 9:54PM EDT
The heavy freezer door opens to reveal a scene of indiscriminate slaughter. A heaping mass of caribou blood, bone and hair is piled upon the cold metal floor. From metal racks above, stiff caribou heads stare down at the grisly mound of rib upon spine upon tendon, as they await their fate in summer stewpots.
“Oh sure we use the heads,” says Bertha Mackenzie, a plucky receptionist from the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, as she holds open the door. “We use everything. Even the unmentionables.”
To an outsider, it’s a horrifying sight. To Ms. Mackenzie and other locals, who use the freezer as a food bank to serve a community of 300 rabidly carnivorous souls, it’s the empty space around the pile that elicits horror.
“Usually they’re stacked so high you can’t walk in here,” says Ms. Mackenzie, surveying the frozen corpses.
Once a marvel of natural perseverance, the herd that winters around Great Bear and Great Slave lakes is now a great natural mystery, declining at a unknown rate and for unknown reasons. Alarmingly low caribou counts recently prompted the Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT) to impose a hunting ban throughout the range of the Bathurst caribou, an area twice the size of New Brunswick. While the government argues that the drastic measure was necessary to save the species, the Yellowknives are taking the issue to the territorial Supreme Court later this month, contesting the government’s authority over First
The spark for this escalating biological and legal issue came in September. With the ice beginning to form on local lakes, local hunters began preparing for an annual hunt of caribou that takes between 8,000 and 10,000 animals. Then Environment Minister J. Michael Miltenberger received some shocking numbers: For every 15 Bathurst caribou counted in 1986, there was one in 2009. Between 2003 and 2009 alone, the population had plummeted from 128,000 to 32,000. Government biologists estimated the herd would disappear within five years.
It is the same sad fate that has, to some degree, befallen nearly every caribou species worldwide in recent years.
Across the tundra, the formidable Beverly herd has declined from 200,000 a decade ago to below 10,000 today. And in Siberia, reindeer numbers have dropped by the hundreds of thousands.
But only around Yellowknife is the political climate so combustible, and the caribou so important, that loss can undermine an entire system of government.
“It’s a politically complex region,” said Mr. Miltenberger, listing off various First Nations in the area that have established, or are close to establishing, self-government – therefore placing them beyond the purview of the GNWT on many issues. That recent trend has destabilized the territory’s already ambiguous governmental grip. Under the terms of the GNWT Act, the government’s authority is delegated by Ottawa, rather than being constitutionally entrenched. The federal government also retains control over Crown lands and non-renewable resources in the territory. It’s a combination that results in the government’s authority constantly being questioned, and its financial independence constantly foiled.
And it’s why Mr. Miltenberger’s ban went over like a match to kindling.
“As soon as I heard about that ban I immediately went out to bag myself a caribou,” said Jonas Sangris, a former chief and hunter, who received a warning from wildlife officers. “They confiscated some of my meat, but I think they will live to regret it,” he said, predicting victory in the resulting legal battle.
Mr. Sangris will appear at a Supreme
“They are not a province, they forget that some times,” said Fred Sangris, Jonas’s cousin and head of the Yellowknives caribou committee. “They forget that the natives here have more rights than the GNWT does.”
It's a tired argument, according to Mr. Miltenberger. “People have been dragging out these hoary old arguments since the sixties, questioning the credibility of the government,” he said. “Luckily, in this case, I think the majority of people accept the fact that the herd is in serious trouble. And when conservation hits an emergency state, we have authority.”
The Sangris’s don’t dispute that local caribou herds have thinned out. “It’s been such a hungry season that I’m thinking of becoming a vegetarian,” jokes Jonas Sangris.
At the same time, they suggest that natural cycles and poor science are at play, and that neither are so insurmountable as to justify a ban.
They say that government biologists split the Bathurst herd into three separate herds over the past two decades, fragmenting the total count – an opinion shared by many local outfitters.
“They claim the Bathurst herd has lost 90,000 in the last few years,” said Boyd Warner, a hunting guide in the area for over three decades. “That means there should be 90,000 dead caribou laying around somewhere and I haven’t heard of one naturalist, canoeist, geologist or diamond miner whose come across one. It’s not good science, but the territory is using it to wipe businesses out and wipe out a whole way of life.”
A GNWT technical report, however, refuted the split-herd argument, asserting the adverse effect of climate change on local vegetation, as well as an unchecked aboriginal hunt, were more likely culprits.
Average temperatures in the territory have warmed by two degrees since 1948, faster than almost anywhere else in the world.
“Yes, there have been some significant changes with climate change and global warming and there has also bee a lot of resource development,” said Mr. Miltenberger. “There are a whole number or reasons for the decline, and if you keep hunting 10,000 animals a year, it increases that rate of decline. If we don’t have caribou to hunt, the right to hunt is a moot point, isn't it?”