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Press Release




Migratory caribou sport hunting closure

Québec City, December 21, 2016 – Luc Blanchette, Québec's Minister of Forests, Wildlife and Parks, has announced that sport hunting of migratory caribou will be closed in Québec as from February 1, 2018, for an undetermined period, in order to foster the sustainability of the species.

Sport hunting of the George River herd was closed in 2012 due to the significant decline in numbers. Since then, the Leaf River herd has been the only one to sustain sport hunting and Aboriginal harvesting in Québec. According to an inventory carried out in the summer of 2016, Leaf River numbers have also continued to decline and the herd now comprises less than 199,000 animals.

"The situation of the Leaf River caribou herd is worrying," said Minister Blanchette. "Our Government therefore has the responsibility to apply management measures that will foster the sustainability of a species of considerable importance to Northern ecosystems and Aboriginal communities in Québec."

A Government inter-ministerial committee will also be set up to assess the main social and economic consequences of the declining migratory caribou population in Northern Québec, and propose mitigation measures. The committee will consult the partners likely to be affected by future decision, through task forces.

The Québec Government will work closely with the federal government and the government of Newfoundland-and-Labrador to promote the sustainability of caribou populations in Ungava. It will also continue to monitor the herds and will continue to work closely with the Caribou Ungava research group on its ongoing studies of migratory caribou.

The Cree, Inuit and Naskapi nations will also monitor their own harvests, in accordance with their undertakings. Their contribution is vital in gathering the data needed to ensure sound herd management in the coming years.

The Leaf River herd management plan is currently being prepared in collaboration with the Hunting, Fishing and Trapping Coordinating Committee, and the main wildlife management partners should be consulted during the process.

Between now and the closure of caribou sport hunting on February 1, 2018, the conditions in force for the 2017-2018 fall and winter hunting seasons will be as stated below.

Summary of sport hunting conditions in force in 2017-2018

Zone 22A

Maintenance of the sport hunting closure for 2017-2018.
For other zones

Bag limit of one caribou per licence, with the option for hunters to purchase two licences.
Provincial bag limit set at two caribou per hunter per year.
Zone 22B

Total of 617 licences issued.
Hunting period starts on December 1, 2017 and ends on January 31, 2018.
Maintenance of the rule prohibiting the killing of antlerless caribou and caribou with antlers measuring less than 15 cm.
Maintenance of the rule prohibiting sport hunting in the exclusion corridor on Category III land on either side of the Chisasibi road.
Zone 23 West

Total of 749 licences issued.
Hunting period starts on August 15, 2017 and ends on October 4, 2017.
For a hunter who purchases a second permit for the same zone, maintenance of the rule prohibiting the killing of more than one caribou with antlers measuring more than 40 cm above the top of the head.
For information on the MFFP and to learn more about its activities and achievements, visit mffp.gouv.qc.ca and the following social media pages:

Enjoy your wolves.

They better quit wringing their hands, and develop a good helicopter aerial gunning program for wolves. We could show them how.

The wolves have been there as long as the caribou have. If wolves alone were the problem, the caribou would have been gone long ago.

This!!!!

The only reason for me going to Quebec is gone.

It takes some mighty F'ed up conservation oversite for Quebec to run out of caribou.

When I was last there, 2002/2003, the Leaf and George rivers herds were estimated at 1.3 million. Now I hear 350k. Wolfs cannot be the sole cause, disease, habitat changes, subsistence hunting and who knows what else. It is a sad story that the greatest wildlife migration in North America had declined 75% in a dozen years and biologist don't know why. In 2002 I watched and filmed upwards of 12,000 caribou stream through our camp in a two day span. I'll never forget it. I chased caribou on foot just for the fun of running with them. I stood beside a tree where they came out of a river crossing and tried to touch them as they passed within three feet of me. Got wet when they shook off like a dog. One of my top three outdoor experiences.

Caribou everywhere are notoriously cyclic. It takes mismanagement to let the herds get too big and worse management when they start heading down.

Predators are not an issue when the herds are at their peaks, but the wolves cycle with the caribou and when they caribou crash the wolves have a huge impact and keep the populations low for a very long bottom to the cycle

This^^^^

An additional contributory factor of what SD posted, is that it takes a long, long time for overgrazed (if they are) lichen to come back.. I believe the average "natural" cycle of caribou herds is on the order of about 70 years.

Or you Quebec folks could just put in a pregnant-cows-only season for 3 1/2 months a year, mid October to Feb 1, like they did in GMU 23 here in Alaska "to slow the decline of the herd".

That should fix it. If you figure out how, PM me.... (Yes, I'm still beating that horse!)

The referenced GMU23 Western Arctic Caribou Herd, by the way, was estimated at 213,000 last summer, with good recruitment and heavier than average calf weights, up from 200,000 the year before. It must be working....???

^^ estimated being the key phrase here,sorta like unemployment #'s ?

+1

Oh well...

This sucks. I never got to go but always wanted to. Another opportunity missed.

I'd want to know the subsistence/aboriginal kill numbers first and foremost. From there, one might figure out what the wolves are doing.

But hey, this is all what the liberals have wanted to happen for a long time anyway. Enough "natural predation" to crash population numbers, and then eliminate sport hunting.

I've hunted the Leaf River in the early '90's. A wonderful part of the planet for sure. The idea that a huge herd has dwindled is sad indeed but I think the cyclic nature of caribou-while not understood-is certainly recognized. The problem is a lot more complicated than predators-human or otherwise. An incredibly complex ecosystem is involved.

In Inuit lore the wolf is what saved the caribou to begin with-the importance of a predator/prey relationship has been recognized for a long time.

I would have liked to go back to Quebec to hunt, I'm glad that I made the trip not just for the hunting but for the fishing and all the wonderful things I had the chance to see.

Well, Caribou hunts should increase in price about 15-20% everywhere else that still has a huntable population.

Not one person commenting on this mentioned the real reason. Caribou populations are in decline all over the arctic, and the reason is obvious and measurable. The climate is changing. Drastically!
Temperatures in recent decades have increased all over the arctic. Much more than at lower latitudes. Caribou time their migrations ( using light intensity and day length) to take advantage of the best new nutritious growth of forage during calving and nursing. But for the last couple decades or so, by the time the herds reach the calving grounds, the forage is over-mature and already going to seed. In their more southerly wintering grounds, the drier hotter summers have allowed many more fires which have burned vast areas of taiga forest. The caribou moss which takes as long to grow as the trees do is gone from much of their winter range - burnt and not coming back for fifty to a hundred years or so.
I have several friends who are biologists working in the North. My son is a wildfire manager working professionally in the north. They all see it. Climate change is here, it is more pronounced in the north, and the effects are obvious. Climate change is not a conspiracy or propaganda from tree huggers. Denying its happening or blaming wolves will not bring the caribou back.

What a bunch of dramatic and wrong bullshit!

Alaska caribou are not in decline in the majority of this state.

Tapping out a lengthy response on my phone is not going to happen, but realize cRibou eat lichen, almost exclusively. Please tell me what it looks like when it goes to seed...

Unreal stupidity abounds!

They haven't closed the season on chicks with hairy armpits.

We don't believe in climate change or dinosaurs.

...and suddenly the room went silent.

Sitka Deer, you are entitled to your opinions, but not to substitute your beliefs for facts. A very quick review of scientific papers related to my point don't give the reader an impression that my facts are in error. Here are a couple of examples, after about five minutes of research:

"As mean spring temperatures at our study site have risen by more than 4°C, caribou have not kept pace with advancement of the plant-growing season on their calving range. As a consequence, offspring mortality has risen and offspring production has dropped fourfold." Climate change reduces reproductive success of an Arctic herbivore through trophic mismatch - Eric Post, Mads C Forchhammer

"Caribou and reindeer herds are declining across their circumpolar range, coincident with increasing arctic temperatures and precipitation, and anthropogenic landscape change. Here, we examine the mechanisms by which climate warming and anthropogenic landscape change influence caribou and reindeer population dynamics, namely changes in phenology, spatiotemporal changes in species overlap, and increased frequency of extreme weather events, and demonstrate that many caribou and reindeer herds show demographic signals consistent with these changes. " VORS, L. S. and BOYCE, M. S. (2009), Global declines of caribou and reindeer. Global Change Biology, 15: 2626–2633. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2486.2009.01974.x

This paper explains better than I can the relationship between lichens and caribou and climate change. My description should have been better, it is not a decrease in nutrition from plants going to seed in the calving grounds, rather seed bearing vascular plants are crowding out the nutritious lichens. -

"Cornelissen, J. H. C., Callaghan, T. V., Alatalo, J. M., Michelsen, A., Graglia, E., Hartley, A. E., Hik, D. S., Hobbie, S. E., Press, M. C., Robinson, C. H., Henry, G. H. R., Shaver, G. R., Phoenix, G. K., Gwynn Jones, D., Jonasson, S., Chapin, F. S., Molau, U., Neill, C., Lee, J. A., Melillo, J. M., Sveinbjörnsson, B. and Aerts, R. (2001), Global change and arctic ecosystems: is lichen decline a function of increases in vascular plant biomass?. Journal of Ecology, 89: 984–994. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2745.2001.00625.x

There are many other published studies that support my hypothesis.

Of course, this could all be a bunch of "unreal stupidity" and "dramatic wrong bullshit", but the available data doesn't support that conclusion.

You're right. The biologists are saying the same thing about Moose in New england.

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.

I do not have anything other than a cell phone right now... but there is a ridiculous contingent of biologists ready to stop, drop, and roll out a raft of preconceived notions.

Caribou are extremely complex and have historically been mismanaged everywhere... I will add some references to papers when I can get at it.

Look at AK caribou studies for a start.

Nutritious lichen??? Surely you jest! Could that be why caribou stomachs are only slightly bigger than a VW?

I completely agree that over hunting and wanton waste by hunters exercising their treaty and aboriginal rights has greatly affected the decline in caribou.

In the 1980's the Beverly herd in Northern Saskatchewan came much further south than usual, putting them into close proximity to several small native communities. At first, the Dene elders went out by snowmobile to their traditional hunting grounds farther north, and shot their usual winter meat requirements - more than they could bring home in one trip. On the return trip to retrieve meat, they found many more caribou much closer to town. So they shot some of them, and didn't get back to the original carcasses that trip. The pattern continued a couple more cycles, until caribou were actually walking thru the towns. Bored young men who had never hunted before took to killing caribou for fun. The northern stores were sold out of ammunition. The lakes were covered with so many frozen caribou carcasses that planes could no longer land on the ice. In the spring every community stank of rotting carcasses, every trapper shack in the bush was surrounded by rotting maggoty meat in huge piles, and the lakes were polluted with the stench. My good friend was a conservation officer at the time, who could only document the destruction because he couldn't arrest enough people to make a difference. The entire dossier of evidence that he collected was suppressed by our provincial government, and he was told to drop it or lose his career. So he quit and sent he documentation to a local hunting magazine. The resulting political furor caused a few changes, but not much really. Nobody can mess with aboriginal hunting rights in Canada, no matter how destructive some practises are. Our Beverly herd which was estimated about a half million in the 1980 is now extinct.

But wanton waste and harassment by snowmobiles is not the whole story. Every herd in Canada is in steep decline. Some of those herds don't have nearly the amount of pressure from native hunters that the Beverly herd did.

Across the Siberian arctic, reindeer are in decline as well. Scandinavia appears to be in flux, some herds actually increasing, most in decline.

So I agree that people are one of the big factors, but an even bigger factor is how the climate in the polar regions is changing, and a lot of dedicated smart scientists are measuring cause and effect and have convinced me that their data does not lie and that their conclusions are real. Warming of arctic regions is having an effect on the ecosystem, and caribou are feeling those effects. And the effects of unregulated hunting. And the effects of human activity like snowmobiles and roads. And the effects of predators and disease. It's all pretty depressing.

And the fact Canada let the population of every herd remain too high for so long they destroyed range capacity?

The Beverly herd moved why? Caribou do that when the range gets thin... those "nutritious" lichen grow slow and blaming vascular plants for blocking them is easier than admitting they managed the herd badly.

Our Mulchatna herd moved or died in the '90s. Our Nelchina herd has cycled 3 major times in my life. As a kid our limit was 6 per year. It is now above carrying capacity. It is poor management.

Convincing the already brainwashed is easy...

It's a shame whatever the cause.

Sitka deer, the Beverly herd of Nunavut and N Sask. didn't "move", it is gone.

The lichen in the Beverly calving grounds IS under pressure from vascular plants, a bunch of scientists are measuring that and are reporting their findings objectively.

The wintering grounds of the former Beverly herd don't really exist any more, because of fires that have burnt about 75% of the country they used in the past for winter range. The fires are a result of much hotter, longer, drier summers that have been amply and objectively documented over the last 20 or so years. If you don't believe me, fly from Points North to Uranium City some time. It's a barren wasteland. About three quarters of the terrain that isn't lakes and rivers is covered with fire killed snags and bare rock and sand ridges. this loss of winter range has been going on for a couple decades, and the forestry managers are losing more ground each year.

My son was stationed in Uranium city two years ago. They fought huge fires all summer, he was spending about $5M per day of our taxpayers dollars. They pretty much lost the battle, but saved a few cabins and small settlements. Last summer big parts of Siberia were in the same condition, and we had the smoke all the way here in southern Saskatchewan.

I certainly won't dispute that "poor management" is a recurring problem that contributes to caribou declines, but I think it is an error to apply your personal experience with a small part of the western arctic to the entire arctic, and then dismiss the work of professionals in the field who are doing their best to measure changes and apply statistics to their findings. The circumpolar arctic is a vast space, and you happen to be in the only part in North America that has a reasonably stable caribou population. Enjoy it while it lasts.

The trouble is that when you mention climate change a lot of people hear "manmade global warming" and think it's liberal talking points. Liberals don't own the notion that the climate is changing nor does the fact that it's real mean it is manmade.

Well, i'm very far from being a liberal, at least as my USA brethren would define it. But I despair when like minded fiscal conservatives and hunters just won't listen to the available facts or look at the data themselves when it comes to the environment. The almighty dollar trumps the environment every time. And the land and its animals lose. Every time. Wish I was wrong on that one.

The climate is changing, regardless of the cause. Populations of animals and plants will have to respond accordingly. Some will not be able to respond as rapidly as their environment changes. Those populations will wink out. Casting blame, tinkering with existing management strategies or denial will not change the outcome. The root problem is that there are already too many people on this planet.

Denying that huge readjustments in natural systems are not going to occur--many of them much more quickly than we can imagine--probably will not have much more effect on the final outcome than adopting any (or all) of interventions that are potentially available to us .

Great! Let's blame everything on Climate Change and play right into the hands of anthropogenic ball washers. For example, there is zero positive correlation between carbon dioxide levels and temperature.

Using human time scales on climate with weather data is too common. There are plenty of papers written with a huge bias against real science...

Fully agree. As to cause of moose decline on the very southern margins of their range that is also probably correct. Temperature largely defines the southern boundaries of range according to my moose "bible". Down there of course, they are also further stressed by ticks, and a couple other things that they aren't farther north, so cumulatively, it doesn't take much in any category of stress to push the boundary farther north.

Anthropogenic climate change is real, but its not to blame for everything.

Hey Woody- thanks for starting this thread. Lots of interesting reading. Whether the warming trend is a brief anomaly or longer-lasting true climate change, it certainly seems to be having several effects that may- I repeat- may- be ganging up on the caribou populations in recent years.

I did note some discrepancies- for example - a 2 day difference in leafing out of bushes over several decades - if similarly reflected in other forage species - doesn't seem enough to matter on the calving grounds per your original allegation. Certainly it's not enough by itself.

The alleged increase in insect activity has possibilities- not in numbers per se, but in length of "bug season", perhaps, for obvious foraging time/weight-gain reasons.

I found it significant on the reverse line that caribou foraging has been found to retard the northward expansion/introduction of more woody, non-forage plants.

I'll stipulatethat drier weather may well be leading to more fires, destroying winter range for caribou. Seems probable. On the other hand, it should be providing more winter range for moose and some other species - squirrels, hares, grouse, etc.

Warmer seasons appear to be dumping more and wetter snow/rain/ice at times on many areas, leading to more difficult foraging and exposure scenarios, but possibly offset some by earlier dates of snow free ground from spring melting and the greening up of more succulent/nutritious forage. Willow leaves, sedges, mushrooms and other caribou goodies. Which I suppose could lead back into supporting your original point. Or not. Oh what a tangled web we weave.....

Internet articles(my "research") written for public consumption (basically summaries, which may have been cherry picked) without referencing back to the hard data is a chancy business at best.

One thing is for certain - there is no "Balance of Nature" - and never has been. Stability of local environments/situations may last for a time, but "stuff" is always fluctuating to a larger or smaller extent.

Remember- extinction over time is the rule - survival of a species the exception.

So I'm going Alfred E. Neuman...."What - me worry?"

Moose here are gone. 15 years ago it was like a petting zoo. 30 years ago it was like today. Not sure on actual count but I spent way more time in the woods 30 years ago and can count on one hand the moose I would see in a deer season. 15 years ago I could run out of hands in one day. Cycle? Dunno. I do know I threw out my 906# bull because of parasites. Yes 906 dressed into the dumpster. Do parasites cycle with weather? Dunno.

Would very much like to read a study on population explosion/decline relative to food sources, weather and geographic location. It would be mind boggling the variables involved. To say it's "THIS" is impossible i'm afraid and a fools parade to say so.

Can only guess (with no background in the matter whatsoever) that if a healthy herd of warm blooded anything has food stores that run a percentage above population and that population sees a sharp increase in numbers #$^ happens. A perfect storm of weather provides a few years of excellent birthing opportunities with little loss. Exponential numbers of new moms are now producing. After 5 or ten years food stores cant keep up. Now disease and malnutrituion are prevalent. Prey animals and human counts increase like they will always do. The herd numbers drop in epic fashion. Big surprise.

IIRC Quebec has cut a few trees in the last 30 years. Last 75 years. Last 125 years. Suppose the population increase in North America in the last half century has required 30 extra 2x4's for housing alone much less commercial populations? They cut trees up there. Lots of #^$#^ trees. And that would be one variable without weather although it may effect as weather would the food sources. Dunno.

Humans pretty much @#%^6 it all up. But an ever changing planet is also to blame. We just happen to all be old enough to remember when and look at it now. Throwing darts in the dark....

W

One other potential factor not yet discussed is overpopulation of other species using the same habitat. For 20 years now we have heard the stories of the snow geese exploding population destroying their northern nesting grounds. Don't they eat the same lichen as caribou? So two overpopulated species impacting the same resource and they should both be headed to a cyclical population crash. I think the geese have a better chance of making an adjustment to survive. In 2000 I watch a flock land in a rice field in AR. They formed a tornado shape as they circled to land and the flock stretched to the horizon. I watched for a good 45 minutes and as darkness fell they were still coming from the horizon. I have no idea how many but it may have approached 100k. Next morning the rice field was bare.
As I said earlier, glad I got to experience the greatest big game migration in North America when it was at the peak for my lifetime.

That many would strip the land.