November 12, 1998

Fisheries minister lifts beluga, narwhal quotas

Fisheries Minister David Anderson announced that he's lifting beluga quotas for Iqaluit and Kimmirut next year.

DWANE WILKIN
Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT — Federal fisheries minister David Anderson has relaxed small whale harvesting quotas in Nunavut on the condition that hunters help monitor beluga and narwhal populations.

Anderson told the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board this week that he will accept the board's recommendation that beluga quotas in Iqaluit and Kimmirut be lifted next year, provided that hunters work with fisheries officials to assess the real impact of hunting on southeast Baffin beluga stocks.

The minister has also agreed to the wildlife board's proposed three-year management plan for narwhal, which will see quotas lifted in every community, also subject to a number of conditions.

But although the board reiterated demands for expanding the territory's share of the Davis Strait and Baffin Bay turbot quota, the best the minister could offer was a promise that Nunavut would get any future increase in quota for the northern region.

Greenland and Canada currently share evenly a total allowable catch (TAC) of 11,000 tonnes per year.

"We hope to continue work on increasing that TAC, and if any increase in TAC does takes place, it'll be possible to make the changes immediately to accommodate the Nunavut fishery," Anderson said.

Prior to boarding a flight to Pangnirtung, where he was scheduled to tour the Pangnirtung Fisheries processing plant, the minister said he would approve the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board's proposed changes to narwhal and beluga quotas.

Dan Pike, executive director of the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board, described the changes as a "real movement of responsibility to the local level."

No open season

But the changes do not imply that wildlife authorities have declared an open season on belugas and narwhals, Pike cautioned.

"It's a lifting of quotas if communities can fulfill certain conditions," Pike said. "One goes along with the other, that's a real critical thing to understand. Nobody's talking about just lifting quotas across the board."

Changes to the whale hunting regulations will require that all communities adopt a reporting system that will enable wildlife officials to properly monitor the actual number of beluga and narwhals killed each season.

This means providing an accurate estimate of the number of animals that are wounded during a hunt, but which manage to escape, presumably to die later.

"When you're talking about the science and you don't have the information on how many animals are killed, the number of animals landed is less important that the overall number of animals who die, even if they're not recovered," Anderson said.

"So we're trading off certainty in terms of numbers landed, for better information on stock."

Hunters and trappers organizations (HTO) must now come to some agreement as to how such a reporting system will function.

HTOs will control narwhal

In the case of narwhals, each community HTO will be responsible for bringing in a set of local bylaws to control hunting in their own areas.

The bylaws would be expected to establish specific non-quota requirements for narwhal hunting, such as appropriate hunting methods and possession limits.

"We want them to ensure the conservation of narwhal and ensure that there's not going to be a tremendous increase in harvest. It's up to them to devise specific rules for their communities," Pike said.

Knowledge of beluga populations has increased significantly since 1991, when quotas were first imposed on Iqaluit and Kimmirut.

At the time, Pike said, it was believed that there was one stock of beluga shared between Iqaluit, Kimmirut and Pangnirtung.

But new information suggests that hunters from each of these communities have been harvesting separate population groups.

Although total absolute numbers are not known, "there's no evidence whatsoever that populations hunted by Iqaluit and Kimmirut have been reduced or depleted," Pike said.

More importantly, the wildlife board argued, the quotas themselves do not limit the harvest, since hunters from Iqaluit and Kimmirut rarely reach those quotas.

Iqaluit has never reached its annual quota of 35 beluga since it was imposed in 1991, and Kimmirut's summer quota of 20 animals has only been reached once.

"We're not expecting to see any increase in harvesting, since people are presumably taking as many beluga as they want or can access now," Pike said.