Caribou summit asks a burning question: What's the future of the Porcupine herd?
CBC
The Porcupine caribou is one of the few barren-ground herds in the circumpolar world that remains strong and healthy — and the communities who rely on it want to make sure it stays that way.
This was the key takeaway from a three-day Caribou Summit held in Fort McPherson, N.W.T., last week. Organized by the Gwich'in Tribal council, it was the first event of its kind for the region.
"These types of gatherings … bring out the best in our people," said Ken Kyikavichik, grand chief of the Gwich'in Tribal Council, in an interview on the summit's first night. "The collective power and the collective knowledge we have in this room really is astounding."
The herd has gained international attention over the years because of ongoing debate in the U.S. over development in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where the herd's calving grounds are.
The Porcupine caribou stand as an anomaly amid Canada's many barren-ground caribou herds suffering major declines. Data collected in 2018 marked a historic high, with 205,000 to 235,000 animals counted.
Today, that number sits around 218,000, according to caribou biologist Mike Suitor with the Yukon Government.
"Right now, it's actually one of the biggest herds in the world," Suitor said.
"We collect information from a scientific perspective, but we also collect a lot of information working with harvesters and talking to people in the community, and a lot of indications are still fairly positive.
It's difficult to pinpoint exactly why the Porcupine caribou herd is doing so well at the moment, Suitor said.
It could be that the diversity of the herd's range has allowed the animals to better adapt to the changing climate, or that there's fewer human-made obstacles (save for the Dempster Highway) impacting their migration.
It also likely has to do with how proactive Indigenous communities have been in managing the herd. Gwich'in, Inuvialuit, and other First Nations governments signed the Porcupine Caribou Management Agreement in 1985, subsequently creating the Porcupine Caribou Management Board.
But Suitor warned that a dip in numbers is inevitable.
"It's normal for some herds — they go up, they go down," he said. "If I was a betting person, I would say that there's a reasonable chance it will decline in the near future. Is that two years? Five years? Ten years? It's hard to say."
Kyikavichik says this reality magnified the summit's importance.
