By Nelson Semeniuk With debate raging over the management of caribou in the NWT, some businesses risk losing it all. Peterson’s Point Lake Lodge is one business whose fate rests on negotiations between the territorial government and aboriginal groups.

With debate raging over the management of caribou in the NWT, Peterson’s Point Lake Lodge is one business that is at risk of losing it all. Its fate rests on negotiations between the territorial government and aboriginal groups.

Amanda Peterson wonders how she’s going to make ends meet. Her family’s sport hunting and fishing business, Peterson’s Point Lake Lodge, is hemorrhaging. In mid-April, the business lost $45,000 in revenue when a hunting group cancelled because they couldn’t get caribou tags. Now, sitting in the solarium of her mother’s modest Yellowknife home – where her childhood bedroom, now her office, is located – Amanda says she might have to sell her Madeleine Lake home to stop the bleeding. “We feel helpless because this entire thing, our business, hinges on what the decision is on our ability to hunt caribou,” she says. Amanda has feared for the future of the lodge, founded by her father in 1984, since her income dried up at the beginning of this year, at the same time as the caribou tags disappeared.

On January 1 this year, the NWT imposed a complete ban on 70,000 square kilometres of the Bathurst herd’s range, stretching from the north shore of Great Slave Lake to the Arctic coast. The decision was prompted by an unprecedented and hotly contested decline in the herd. As a result, Peterson’s Lodge received none of their usual 75 tags. Without being able to book hunts, which make up a large chunk of their annual revenue, the lodge is struggling to stay open.

The legacy her father built is always in the back of her mind, but “we’ve got bills to pay,” says Amanda. They include insurance, general maintenance and staff, which her mother, Margaret, normally soft-spoken but now fiery, says they won’t be able to hire, let alone pay this year. “It is a reality for me,” Margaret says of the lodge’s possible closure. “If it is for the government, I don’t know.”

Amanda is careful when choosing her words. It isn’t an Aboriginals-versus-hunters issue, she says. For her, it’s an issue of the territorial government’s lack of real inclusion of outfitters when deciding the future. “It might not be the lack of vision for the future,” she says, “but it’s a very tunneled vision of the future and it doesn’t include us.”

In fact, it’s unclear whether the government has a workable vision. In 1996, the NWT completed a vast survey of the Bathurst caribou and found the herd to be stable at 349,000. While it was a drop from the 1986 peak of 472,000 animals, officials suspected the decline might not have been as drastic as the numbers showed. Survey methods were less precise than they had been in the 1980s, and there was a higher margin for error.

Nonetheless, the government didn’t find it necessary to complete a full survey of the herd at any time between 1996 and 2003. Former government biologist Anne Gunn says comprehensive surveys should have been done more often. “Because there wasn’t a decline in the numbers they didn’t consider it a priority,” she says. The government was unwilling to budge on funding for the expensive process, despite her tone of urgency in 2001. That’s when Gunn began pushing hard for funding to complete a survey, knowing what might be occurring on the herd’s range. For her, it was obvious, based on both scientific and traditional knowledge, that when a peak is reached, a decline is not far behind. In order to cushion the drop, management actions would be needed.

So in 2003, when government scientists completed the first photographic survey of the herd since 1996, it wasn’t a surprise to Gunn that numbers had plummeted. The government reported the herd was down to 186,000 animals, a decrease of 47 per cent from 1996. Even worse, there was a drop of over 50 per cent in the number of breeding females, a key indicator of a herd’s health. With a drastic decline now visible, the government decided photographic surveys were required every three years rather than every six.

Reported numbers continued to spiral down, with the total of breeding females down to approximately 55,000 by 2006 and 16,600 by 2009. The best government estimates now put the herd, both female and male, at 33,000, down some 310,000 animals in 13 years.

Biologists with the government cannot give a concrete explanation as to why the caribou are disappearing. Theories of climate change, loss of food from forest fires, predation from wolves, poor food quality, changing weather patterns and extensive mining and exploration in the range are all said to be possible contributing factors, but there is little understanding of which factors are most important or how they all interact.

Recent actions to protect the crashing herd aren’t the first time the government has attempted to take a stand. In 2006, the government put forward a proposal to the Wek’eezhii Renewable Resources Board, the management board in charge of caribou on Tlicho lands, without consulting with the Aboriginal governments. This ignited a political firestorm. Outfitters saw their tag limits drop from 1,250 to 750 in the blink of an eye. Tlicho chiefs, particularly Behchoko chief Leon Lafferty, slammed the government, calling the move irresponsible. “We need to really look at this before we make any recommendations,” he said at a hearing in 2006. “We can’t just kill an industry based on information [from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources].”

At the time, Tlicho Grand Chief George Mackenzie spoke about a strong working relationship with outfitters, assuring the industry they could work together to protect the herd. Jim Peterson, who was president of the Barren Ground Caribou Outfitters Association at the time, echoed the chiefs’ position on ENR’s lack of consultation, saying it was the first time the industry had been involved. “We will sacrifice ourselves if it comes to that, but I think we can have a good future together,” he said. “This bonding between the Tlicho and outfitters, this is a new start.”

How times have changed.

Now, after years of too little, too late, those at the bottom of the pecking order are losing their privileges in the current, panicked conservation. And, according to the Tlicho land claims agreement signed in 2005, resident hunters and outfitters are the first to go.

The weeklong caribou hearings in Behchoko in March were compared by many in the audience to the Berger Inquiry into the Mackenzie gas pipeline 30 years ago, in both intensity and level of interest. Held by the Wek’eezhii Renewable Resource Board, the hearings gave all parties with a stake in the survival of the Bathurst caribou a chance to be in the same room together. In the end, the board would have to decide whether or not the proposal presented by the Tlicho and territorial governments would be approved or modified.

For a week, resident hunters, sport hunters, the city of Yellowknife, Yellowknives Dene, Métis, the territorial and Tlicho governments and a variety of other interested parties sat and talked to each other in the Behchoko community hall. The intention was to find common ground on what to do to protect the herd and the personal, business, environmental and cultural interests tied up in it, but it wasn’t long before the hopes of peaceful cooperation gave way to reality, and tempers flared. On day two, Martin Knutson, president of the NWT Wildlife Federation, called the move to oust resident hunters and outfitters a “political” decision and one not based on a willingness to work together on a solution everyone can agree on.

Nobody could agree on how much the herd had declined, or how to deal with it. Frustration mounted around the table. Outfitters, alternating between stone-faced resignation and fearful anger, sat and watched as their family legacies and the businesses they took years, even decades to build, faced the twin wrecking balls of government mismanagement and Aboriginal rights.

In the eyes of the territorial government and Tlicho officials, the outfitters’ fates were already decided. Aboriginal hunting rights come first. Special advisor to the Tlicho government John B. Zoe said the industry didn’t have the “right” to hunt, but enjoyed a “privilege,” and in times of conservation, the rights of Aboriginals trumped the industry.

Not that the Tlicho and the territorial governments agreed on much themselves. The proposal put forward in 2009 lives up to its name (the Joint Proposal on Caribou Management Actions in Wek’eezhii) in only the loosest sense. The proposal outlines nine measures the two governments want to see happen if the board approves it, which include reductions in harvest and hunter education. However, the two governments failed to agree on two of the biggest recommendations – the reduction in hunting of male and of female caribou by Aboriginals.

By the end of the week, it seemed the only thing “joint” about the proposal was that both parties had signed the document. On the second day of the hearings, Zoe said unless an agreement is reached on Aboriginal hunting, the foundation of their self-governance will go unfulfilled.

“(It) requires a lot of collaboration with the Elders to pull out the traditional knowledge, to ensure that it fits into a management plan and future regulatory actions, because that’s what the Tlicho Agreement is about,” said Zoe. “This Tlicho Agreement is to ensure that the knowledge we have is built into the process of management into the future, taking into consideration the scientific community and knowledge. And that brings the words of ‘strong like two people’ to the forefront.”

Zoe believes the process was flawed from the outset because of the territorial government’s knee-jerk reaction to the decline and the subsequent implementation of a no-hunting zone north of Great Slave Lake, in the heart of Tlicho lands. Because of this, he says, focus was diverted from the management proposal and how to save the caribou to ensure they last into the future. Instead, community members young and old alike spent time criticizing their chiefs for not standing up for their rights and progress didn’t happen.

Zoe isn’t the only one who thinks the decision wasn’t properly thought through. Yellowknife Mayor Gord Van Tighem said he is concerned with trickle-down effects the ban on hunting will have on the city’s business sector. A study completed in 2006 by Ellis Consulting Services showed the outfitting industry contributed up to $7-million annually to the city’s economy.

During a presentation to the board on the third day of the hearings, Van Tighem said the loss of the ability to hunt could deter people from moving here. If hunting is no longer a selling tool to bring people North, “it’s even harder to recruit and keep people employed here,” he said. “The outfitters as an industry can’t wait. They don’t know if they’ll be viable in the next three to five years.”

The contribution from hunting has almost certainly gone down already from the 2006 estimate, with one early example being the loss of well-known hunting and fishing store Wolverine Guns and Tackle. Owner Brian Rendell picked up and moved the store to Alberta after seeing a decline in sales in 2009 of some 40 per cent, something he attributed to the caribou tag reduction in 2006.

In Copenhagen for the UN’s climate change conference, ENR Minister Michael Miltenberger temporarily escaped the frustration and anger of people across the territory when his department delivered the news of the interim ban just days before the government went on a two-week holiday for Christmas. On top of the ban, the government asked the Supreme Court of the NWT to determine if the government has the right to restrict Aboriginal hunting.

Peppered with questions on a daily basis during the February session of government, Miltenberger at times showed frustration with regular members who wanted to know why the interim ban was put in place so abruptly. Beaufort-Delta MLA David Krutko criticized the minister, saying, “At the 11th hour they show up with a sledgehammer and say, sorry, we have to stop you guys from hunting today because the herd disappeared.”

In the meantime, the Tlicho and Yellowknives Dene continue to hunt. Communities are working out deals with the government to allow for a limited harvest to fill their communities freezers and feed the people who have relied on the caribou as a primary food source, but may be able to do so no more.

For now, Amanda and Margaret Peterson will have to wait for their fate to be determined by forces beyond their control, although indications are it’s a fait accompli. A letter sent to outfitters by the government in mid-April said they would be fined if hunts were being booked through their businesses. Amanda laughs bitterly at a line in the letter saying the government hopes the news of potential fines for booking hunts is found to be satisfactory. “It’s real satisfactory,” she says sarcastically.

“Their minds are already made up, a long time ago,” says Margaret Peterson, sipping from a hot cup of tea. “Without broadening the people involved in the debate, in industry, other people … you’re going to get the same results.”

For Amanda that’s the problem. With decades of experience, outfitters have important information and a new-age version of traditional knowledge to contribute to the vast pool of understanding of the caribou. “If they’re not valuing hearing our perspective and our knowledge …what is there vision for the outfitting industry, or the NWT as a whole,” she says. “It feels uncomfortable because it appears we’re getting kicked out the door.”