Caribou down 70% in last 20 yrs?

Just heard that on a nature show. Really? Also the continuing saga about artic ice melting. Rocky Mountains were carved by melting glaciers. Kansas used to be an ocean.

Could be. I know some herds have declined in massive numbers. I remember hearing about 100000 drowning one year after some hydro project released water in Manitoba if I remember right. . Arctic ice is melting. We are living with those changes.

The 40 mile herd seems to be growing.

Porcupine herd is doing well also. Caribou have been and always will be cyclical, nobody really has them figured out.

If you really want to read some good stuff about caribou from someone who knows a whole bunch about them, Google "Jim Dau caribou". He had a really good article in the Boone and Crockett magazine a few years ago. Worth the effort to find it.

Quebec has ended all caribou hunting.

i thought the natives still hunt the grounds you and me was forced to abandon.
Ahhh i loved it up there 400 miles west of Kuggiak.(i know spelling)
All them camps left with everything sitting there .

Ryan I think* what us may be talking about happened in an area of northern Quebec near western Labrador in fall 1984. Actually just under 10,000 carcasses were pulled out of the upper Koksoak River. It is all well documented after water was released from the Caniapiscau Resevoir. I was working with the Ministry here at the time and 2 of our guys discovered it when they were homing in on a dead collar. As bad as the 10,000 sounds, and not to be condoned at all, the George River herd was growing at the time and continued to grow until about the early to mid 90's when it peaked at 7 - 800,000 depending on whose info. u use.

* unless there was a similar thing happened in northern Manitoba

No not in Manitoba was there a mass ice out kill. That I'm aware of.
Sat through a very interesting review of the caribou herd management and some of the data collected now-a-days. The retrieved GPS that are activated released collars had cameras on them to see what they were eating for a year's time. These were some from the corner of Ontario-across Manitoba and summering above MB/SASK in the NWT.
One of the interesting studies was the summer food did not go to succulent vegetation but remained on lichen and mosses.
As I have stated before social media has increased harvest when they get near communities.
The next concern is CWD reaching the top of Sask where the two ranges of deer and caribou overlap and a jump across species.

here it is


https://www.boone-crockett.org/community/pdf/FC_Spring2009_TheAdaptableCaibou.pdf

I know the Leaf River Quebec herd had overgrazed their core range and it was a well known fact that the crash was coming it was just a matter of time. They wanted to raise the quota per hunter to 5 instead of 2 but it was not politically correct.It will take decades for the food supply to recover. Their are two caribou herds in Quebec the Leaf river herd and the George River herd both have witness severe and dramatic reductions, the bigger problem now, especially with the George river herd is the continued hunt even though the herd has dropped 99% in the last twenty years.
The George river herd is shared with Labrador.

Gibb that makes a lot of sense but didn't they close all caribou hunting in Quebec except the natives? I got to hunt the George River herd several years ago.

All the non-native hunts ended a couple of years ago. It was well known back 25 years ago that the Leaf River herd was overgrazing their range and that it would lead up to a crash, I would think the same thing happened to the other main herd, George River.
Crosspatch has current information on the George River herd.

Correct Jim and an update. George River calving and summer range is recovering and what GR caribou that are left are responding to range recovery with increased adult and calf survival. Wolves are nil and so the caribou should be now increasing but they are not. Last census was 5,500 this past summer and that was another decline in a long string of declines going back over 20 years now. So even though the caribou are trying to increase, after a long period of natural decline, they are still declining.

Answer to continued decline is simple - bullets. Bullets matter. Bullets are aided by a very much increased human population with all the latest technology i.e. a game changer has been introduced that was never there before in all the ups and downs with caribou over the '000's of years before.

A lot of people either do not care and/or are in denial such as the caribou "always came back" (they did except this time game changers have been introduced and preclude that), or "the caribou are gone somewhere else" - nope the land is not longer immense anymore - u can not hide thousands of caribou anymore even in u wanted to. "Climate change' - yes occurring but very slow and still plenty of caribou in NFLD island range which is much more lush than most of Labrador caribou range so some very slow vegetation change is not the issue, "too much development" - some development but the vast majority of the habitat is intact and in fact the George River herd actually increased for decades in the presence of what little development we do have. Again I go to the NFLD example - there are 30,000 caribou there in a place 1/3 the size of Labrador. Compared to Labrador NFLD island is honeycombed with development. Caribou there increased to about 90,000 over decades to the 1990's, declined and now appear to have stabilized at about 30,000. Coyotes and some wolves are present there but the human harvest is controlled at about only 2% of the 30,000. No game changer hunting allowed.

Bullets matter and denial is fairly common locally about it. Governments find it too much of a political football to tackle and so talking continues as the decline continues. Difficult to be optimistic about the future of caribou in Labrador.

Least I leave the wrong impression the vast majority of people here have given up hunting caribou but even amongst those lots see it as OK to accept a meal i.e. a little bit won't hurt. Problem is a lot of little bits add up and do hurt. For those that still hunt they only have to kill several hundred a year to keep the GR in decline.

Do the Native people there have an alternate source of food besides caribou,that is affordable?

Yes I think so but to put in perspective caribou is "the animal". Culturally all other animals, including store food, pale. Kind of like the buffalo back in the day I imagine where that one animal supplied so much quantity and variety of uses including non-food uses. Regards to store food interesting that it is probably cheaper than hunted food in terms of actual cost but of course culturally and nutritionally no comparison. And regards to other wild food difficult to pile up so much quantity as there is after a really successful caribou hunt.

They don't "bite the bullet" though then it is game over for a long time if not forever. People just going to have to learn to suck it up for a while if they want future generations to enjoy what past generations had.

Another way I started to frame this question a few years ago was for thousands of years the people depended on the caribou. If the caribou did not give themselves to the people then the people suffered even to the point of death by starvation. The caribou had the power of life and death over the people. Now the situation is reversed and the people have the power of life and death over the caribou - how are they going to exercise that power?

.

Jim Dau is a friend of mine, and he was NorthWest Alaska Caribou biologist for 20 hours +. A library of Caribou info if ever there was.

Caribou populations wax and wane like Rabbit cycles, our Western Arctic Caribou Herd WACH, was once 500,000 strong back in the early 2000s, dipped to 200,000 and now is around 250,0000.

With the warming Caribou migrations are disrupted, and fully 1/2 of the herd remains North in theBrooks Range
Mid winter warm ups with rain ice the forage for Caribou and Sheep, starving them, and when the adults move on, the calf’s die first, en mass.

Weakened Caribou have small calf’s and are easier prey for predators.

Fully 1/2 or more of the WACH stayed North in the Brooks Range, not making th migration south this year. Stopped and stayed, right where rut hit em.


My father in-law lived a long life, 1903 until 2007, and he saw the fluctuations many times.
It’s a cycle driven by weather, and the changes in habit

We’re well aware that many times over the wolds climate has changed, but to be actually in the mosh pit is different that reading about it.

The number one reason animals die out/go extinct is habitat loss.

We ate a lot mor Rabbits and Fish this Winter than any time previously, Geese now, more a Fish soon, with more small game.

Agree on the long term fluctuations with caribou. Been there done that and yes same happened here over the eons but this time here the game changers have entered the equation: a lot more people with technology way beyond what any of the caribou hunter ancestors ever imagined = a problem the caribou have never faced before. What caribou that are left in the population lows can not go undetected especially with people that pursue them not only with the advantages of the latest technology but also increased numbers of hunters who do not face death by starvation if they are not successful i.e. they can continue to hunt another day and another day etc. etc. regardless of results. Agreed about the significance of habitat loss but it is a nil issue here.

Hopefully other parts of caribou country do not face the same issue re. caribou recovery.

Crosspatch, are you not getting mid winter rains that ice the Tundra?

It used to be every few years her, now it’s three in a row. Weak/dead calf’s, low birth rates and adult Caribou weakened and easily caught by predators.

Add to the mix, successfully predators, like Wolves, raise larger litters, that also eat eat eat... much like Lynx responding to an upswing in Rabbits.
We can basically limit Human predation, via law, but predators have to be caught/killed, or naturally decline with prey numbers.

While more sport hunting may be going on, our out of states folks are limited to one Bull, and there are not only fewer people relying on the resource, the dog teams that fed on Caribou are all gone too. I’d venture to say Human predation is lessening, as you said, it’s not do or die with hunting anymore.
Here in Alaska, a scope, with no electronics is about as technical a guy can get, the rifle hasn’t changed in 130 years with smoklesspowder.
No nightscopes, no drones, no shining light in their eyes, etc., keeps things on a 100 year old technologie......

Yes know about ice on the tundra - we call it glitter and not an issue most years and when it is the caribou move up or down in elevation or move a bit further away.

Our calf percentages are very high this last few years and adult survival and condition are also very good i.e. the caribou are trying to increase and should be except they have not figured our how to cope with bullets when they are trying to recover from the low point in the long term population cycle.

Our wolves are almost nil with the caribou numbers so low.

Technology - GPS means everybody is a hunter where formerly only the better country people went far. Throw in the speed and range of travel of skidoos now versus dog teams back in the day. And of course the few caribou we have left can not hide that helicopters and planes (not hunting caribou but doing other things) do not find them. Around here everyone in remote communities keeps in good with the pilots for a lot of reasons one of which is what are the pilots seeing out on the land. Imagine everyone in remote places keeps in good with the pilots for a lot of good reasons.

Caribou I worked caribou for most of 33 years and hunted them longer. No beef in our house worth talking about all those years but now we are switched to moose. My oldest boy has taken after me and is a Conservation Officer with our local Inuit government. We just got back from a day hunt for seals yesterday - we harpooned 4 at the breathing holes and shot 2 more laid out on the sea ice. Oldest boy is off for a spring goose hunt today. Got to go shortly and clean up that seal meat and share around to some who do not have any. Then got to pick a spring goose for Mother's Day dinner tomorrow. Imagine from ur pic's (on ur other post) u do similar. What appears not similar is our caribou situations. You are fortunate in that regard.

Indeed, crosspatch, the Caribou situation here in Northwest Alaska is different in laws, and likely weather, and their combined effects.

Wolves are plentiful here, although most we caught this Winter were ‘Young n dumb”, the packs are large, and the pups doing well, as all had some fat when skinned.

I’m sure if we arrived at one another’s home, we’d find ourself familiar.

Great discussion!