OK- catnblast.
Why did the Western Arctic Caribou Herd last year have low adult mortality and high calf recruitment with the heaviest calf weights ever recorded with such a "mismatch" of plant growth and calving times? We had an earlier, milder, and warmer spring than in any of the going on 7 years I've lived in Kotzebue. I have lived here in the Arctic on and off for over 40 years, various places, and yes, we had a "soft" winter, of not too cold temperatures and "soft" snow falls. Hardly even any blizzards (which caribou withstand quite nicely if cold) - unlike many of the last 10 years, when we had freezing rain ice storms, and/or mid-winter thaws which coated forage with ice cover. Now THAT may be a climate-change factor of significance! Or just a weather anomaly.... I'll have to research the early forage thing, critically, keeping in mind where their grant money is coming from.
Our local 25-year veteran caribou biologist (now retired), Jim Dau, believed the WEATHER, (not the climate) was the WACH decline cause (with possible, but not documented over grazing) of the herd from over 500,000 (IIRC) 10 years ago to an estimated 200,000 in 2015 , with an average 7% decline per year over the last 8 or 10. Again, if I recall my statistics correctly. The gist is there if I don't have them quite right, anyway.
In this and other "aboriginal" GMUs, "positioning" of caribou with snow machine is allowed. Translation- they get the chit run out of them. The "mysterious" decline of this same herd in the mid-70s from 250,000 to 55,000 in two years time, was "mysterious" only to those in denial for political, racial, and career reasons. I was living a couple hundred miles north of here at the time, and I personally observed the cause(s) - or at least two . Inquiry of teachers in villages of NWA Borough indicated the same situation everywhere as I observed in Point Hope at that time.
By snow-melt in the spring, there were at least a thousand unclaimed caribou carcasses within 20 miles of Point Hope. Mostly shot. But an even more important one in my view was in play.
In mid 70's the caribou took a once- every-couple decades migration route westward to the coast (forage???) rather than their normal one farther interior. And they hung in and around all the western coast villages all winter long, instead of most going their usual place a couple hundred miles south of Kotzebue. Virtually the entire herd was subjected to intensive, and extensive snow machine chase all winter long. By spring, a large percentage of cows were no longer pregnant (by my examination of those I was killing or helping dress). I believe they had spontaneously aborted their calves from stress of the relentless chasing.
Last year, the local "caribou management advisory group" got the State Board to rubber stamp aboriginal practice of killing only (pregnant!) cows from mid October to Feb I, despite the fact that from early November on, the now fatless bulls are once again perfectly edible, having by then rid their meat of rut chemicals.
In fact, this regulation will have no effect on caribou numbers either way, but it sure pisses ME off! I'm perfectly willing to eat non-fat, but good tasting caribou meat in preference to killing pregnant cows if one is worried about herd numbers. I don't eat fat anyway. And yes, those fat cows do taste marginally better. And most of the orphaned calves of the year (also not shootable, now) dying uselessly because they hang around where they last saw their mothers. But scavengers have to eat also, I guess.
Now, this fall, the caribou arrived on the north shores of Kotzebue Sound right on time on their outward migration - during the last couple weeks of October. Normally the ice on Kotzebue Sound is thick enough for them to start crossing right around the first of November. It wasn't this year , and they didn't start crossing until Thanksgiving week. When I was in Hawaii, dammit. I don't think I'll be blaming a no-kill season on "climate change" for a few years ( say, 300) yet, until a definite pattern develops, if it does. Caribou are behaviorally adaptable anyway. Or they wouldn't be currently surviving at both the northern and southern margins of their range.
By the way, our school district here regularly serves the kids reindeer meat..School lunches have to be USDA approved of course. So it is imported from a couple ranches in Montana. How''s that for irony? And adaptability of Rangifer?
Anything short of several centuries cannot be called "climate change", although it can't be ruled out either. Fluctuation of a few years or even several decades don't count. Remember that 300 year "little ice age"? That was a legit "climate change" due to sunspot activity or lack thereof - I don't remember which.
Well, it didn't last either. It was an anomaly. And who says climate change is bad anyway? Some aspects are, and some aren't, but it's been going on for 4 billion years or so. The growing season for gardens on the Kenai Peninsula (600 miles south) where we have a permanent home has increased by at least two weeks since we moved there in 1980.. Good? or Bad? And the small virtually non-migratory caribou herds on the Kenai are still doing OK, tho less so the last couple. Due to ice storms, etc, probably.
I'm not buying the forage gambit quite yet, as you can undoubtedly tell.
