Yereth Rosen
Alaska Beacon
Originally published on Alaska Beacon.
A population decline is continuing in one of North America’s biggest caribou herds, threatening hunting opportunities for rural residents who depend on the animals for food.
The Western Arctic Caribou Herd, which ranges in Northwest Alaska, is down to 121,000 animals, according to the most recent census by state biologists and their partners.
It is the lowest population since the 1970s, continuing a slide since 2003, when the herd peaked at 490,000 animals. In 2023, the last time a population survey was completed, the herd was down to 152,000 animals.
Alex Hansen, a Kotzebue-based wildlife biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, presented the population numbers on Tuesday to the Western Arctic Caribou Herd Working Group.
“So, no end in sight at this point. Certainly, some concerns we all have, and not sure where this is going,” Hansen told the group at a meeting in Anchorage. “But hopefully, we can get through it together.”
The likely response, he said, will be additional hunting restrictions.
The Western Arctic Caribou Herd Working Group, which began its three-day annual meeting on Tuesday, will consider making recommendations for such restrictions.
The group is made up of subsistence users, hunting guides, conservationists and others with interest in the herd, and advises state and federal management regulators. As the herd has declined, state and federal agencies have imposed hunting restrictions, based in part on recommendations made by the working group.
Hansen said biologists calculate that the population, at its current size, will likely support a hunt of about 5,800 animals, far below the general goal of up to 20,000 animals.
While calf birth rates and survival rates are adequate, the herd’s problem comes down to survival rates for adult caribou, especially for adult female caribou, he said.
“We’re seeing that we’re not getting the survival rates that we need to keep this population going and growing as we continue to decline. If we expect to see growth, we probably want to see that survival rate of 85% or higher,” he said. Instead, the survival rate is believed to be 79%, he said.
Refraining from hunting females will be key to preserving the herd, he said.
“If we want to continue to drive this population further into decline, harvesting cows is the way to do it,” he said. “If we want to avoid that, removing cow harvest is one of the few things we can do to accomplish this.”
Charlie Lean, a working group member from Nome, said he sees evidence of the decline.
“It’s pretty grim,” Lean said. “From Nome, from my viewpoint, the caribou were very hard to find. They’re not coming as far on the Seward Peninsula as they used to.”
But hunting limits can cause hardships in the Indigenous villages where residents depend on the hunts for subsistence.
Mary Hugo, a working group member from Anaktuvuk Pass, said she understands the gravity of the problem and the desire to prevent hunting of females.
However, male caribou do not migrate in the area around her non-coastal North Slope village, she said. That makes it difficult for her to sign onto any possible recommendation that hunting of females cease, she said.
“We’re still hunting what goes around, and it’s just females. So it’s hard for me to have an opinion about something that I feel so personal about, because I hunt for my family, and that’s basically saying that I can’t hunt for my kids,” she said, her voice breaking. “So for us to hunt females, it’s not what we want to do, but if we have no choice, we will.”
It is unclear whether the Western Arctic herd is again the biggest in Alaska.
In recent years, that distinction belonged to the Porcupine Caribou Herd, which has a range that straddles the Alaska-Canada border. The Porcupine herd hit an all-time high of 218,000 in the last population census, completed in 2017.
That made it one of the few tundra caribou herds in the Arctic that was not declining during the past two decades.
However, release of new population census is pending, and there are now signs of decline in that herd as well.
Arctic-wide, tundra caribou herd populations have declined by about two thirds over the past two to three decades, according to last year’s Arctic Report Card issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.