So said an official Newfoundland biologist, speaking not this past week – when the current government suspended the annual hunt of the George River herd by non-aboriginal people – but 18 years ago in July of 1992. At that time the herd numbered around 600,000 caribou, having already passed its peak of more than 900,000 several years earlier. Stu Luttich, the aforementioned government biologist, had no trouble predicting the future:
“It will go down to a very, very low level, probably to less than a 100,000 head….”
That’s where the once mighty George River caribou herd, once the largest in the world, stands today: At a hundred grand and still falling.
“When it bottomed out in 1900 there were 5,- or 10,000 in the herd,” Luttich said, adding that at other times (in what several scientists from both this province and Quebec described as a natural 60- to 70-year cycle) it generally stabilizes at around 50,000. “When they get that low you can forget about hunting as we know it.”
What was happening, according to caribou researchers on both sides of the provincial border, was that by growing so large the migratory George River herd had outstripped the capacity of its normal summer grazing land to feed it. To find more food the caribou were forced to leave the windy, but depleted hilltops and seek forage in sheltered valleys, where the hungry insects of the Ungava Peninsula feasted upon them and laid their eggs inside them, driving them mad with pain and torment. Rates and severity of disease and parasite infestation rose steadily year by year.
The 900,000 animals also had to get used to searching unusually long distances for their food, expanding outside of their already impressive range several hundred kilometers further east and west, coming even to the shores of the North Atlantic. In a normal year animals from the George River herd range much less than 3,000 kilometers, but by 1992 (and afterwards, since until these past two years the population decline didn’t make the caribou change their new, frenetic, starvation-imposed ranging) Quebec’s wildlife department regularly tracked individuals roaming more than 6,000 kilometers every year.
"...the Quebec government is doing nothing, the Innu will likely continue to exercise their aboriginal rights, and the Newfoundland government is already weakening its belated resolve by handing out licenses to outfitters who complain about the ban." -
Exhausted, sick, starved, ridden with parasites, harried by natural predators and human hunters, and facing the destruction of their winter forage grounds by more and more Hydro Quebec dams, it’s no wonder that more than 800,000 disappearing caribou weren’t able to sustain a healthy birth rate to replace themselves when they died.
The following organizations (and the people who run them) have known all about this situation for decades and have done little or nothing about it: The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador; The Government of Quebec; The Labrador Inuit Association (which has since become the Nunatsiavut Government); The Innu Nation of Labrador and all the Innu governments of Quebec; and all the commercial hunters, outfitters and sport-hunting lodges throughout Labrador and Quebec that have lived off the herd for years.
Perhaps nothing could have been done (despite 20 years of clearly ignored warnings), but the governments involved could have at least admitted the problem existed and worked together to prevent the worst-case scenario: the possible extinction of the herd. If they are managed wisely and the caribou are allowed to reproduce, their numbers will rebound to a healthy level. If everyone co-operates to maintain the herd at around 300,000 individuals, it could easily support a reasonable amount of hunting for sport, commerce and sustenance.
Unfortunately, the Quebec government is doing nothing, the Innu will likely continue to exercise their aboriginal rights, and the Newfoundland government is already weakening its belated resolve by handing out licenses to outfitters who complain about the ban.
Alas for the George River caribou herd.
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