Forty Mile Feed - Current land use planning for paddy areas provides an opportunity to track unstable populations
The outcome of land use planning near Dawson City may have significant impacts on the Yukon Four Mile Caribou population.
Forty Mile Feed
About twenty mangoes blocked the road. I pulled over to the shoulder. It's a hot July day at the Top of the World Highway, 90 kilometers northwest of Dawson City. Smoke hangs in the air from wildfires burning on the Alaskan border.
Cristina Y Efrén
This is a four-mile caribou herd. Some caribou were lying on the gravel, others were standing with their three-week-old calves at their feet. Velvet still covers the horns of the bulls. A few hundred more caribou were scattered on the ridge ahead, and a few dozen lay among the stunted alders that provided the rocky outcrops above the highway.
The afternoon is slowly winding down. After waiting for a hundred caribou to clear the three-kilometer trail a few kilometers away, I returned to the trail. I open the truck door and get out, trying to make as little noise as possible. I walk around the back of the truck to where my partners Chase Everitt and Chris Clark are parked. Chase is a Fish and Wildlife technician and a citizen of Trandak Huachin. Chris works with the First Nations Land Management Project.
The next moment I was distracted by the wheels rolling down the gravel. I looked up just in time to see a white SUV coming around the corner towards us. The car accelerates without slowing down and quickly closes the gap in the car. Chris honked the truck's horn and finally the SUVs came back to us. "There's a law against harassing wildlife," Chase told the driver, who had gray hair and Alberta plates. "You have to wait until the caribou leave the road."
He begins to talk about public health measures to control the spread of the corona virus, then returns to the caribou. He argued that they should be allowed to do what they want.
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There is a story that forty-mile caribou were so numerous a hundred years ago that the herder spent days crossing the Yukon River. Paddling on the river between Whitehorse and Dawson must wait for the caribou to pass. In the 1970s, the herd experienced dramatic declines and culling, ranging from hundreds of thousands to thousands. A concerted effort to restore the population began in the 1990s. Alaskan wildlife officials have begun an elaborate program to suppress predators, but Yukon hunters and Trondek huachin have stopped harvesting herds. By 2017, the herd had grown back to 80,000 caribou.
The author's companions, Chris Clark and Chase Everitt, wait for the caribou to cross the road and allow them to drive. Photo: Malcolm Bothroyd
There's something poetic about a four-mile herd recovering and stopping traffic once again, but our Albertan friend doesn't seem interested. He pulls a U-turn and turns back toward Dawson, pointing his middle finger at us as he disappears.
The Fortymile caribou is one of those animals that everything else revolves around. Bears and wolves follow the herd, and the tracks of countless caribou are carved into the mountains. Fortymile caribou kept the Tronduk Hwachin, and caribou meat helped tens of thousands of travelers flock north during the Klondike Gold Rush. This new arrival of poaching has led to a herd crisis, displacing First Nation harvests. The Fortymile caribou may have been gone for a while, but its recovery is bringing new hopes and new fears.
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I'm here to take photos and videos of caribou for outreach work with the Yukon Chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wildlife Association. The Yukon is in the middle of a land-use plan for the Dawson area, which will determine what parts of the herd's range will be protected and how much development will be allowed in the rest. This is a critical time for the Fortymile caribou. Some biologists worry that a lack of food in the herd range could lead to another population collapse. Meanwhile, new mining may encroach on the rest of the herds. The next few years will shape the next decades of the herd.
A land use plan is still being developed in the Dawson area, but the draft plan outlines the various levels of development that would be allowed within the core area of the Fortymile caribou herd. Map: Malcolm Boothroyd/CPAWS Yukon Chapter
The memory of the Fortymile caribou lives on in the landscapes where they lived. Ancient caribou tracks line the hills of the Dawson Range, although the herd has not been seen on this land in more than 60 years. These herds once crossed the central Yukon and Alaska, wintering south of Whitehorse. According to the Department of Alaska, a traveler described a canoe down the White River in 1909, saying, “Here we passed forty miles of caribou. The narrow valley and high bald mountains on either side are teeming with animals. In the 1920s. Fish and game, the herd may number 250,000.
At the end of the 20th century, hunting of Fort Mill caribou began, and in the 1930s new roads opened up the highlands for hunters to hunt. Historical accounts of Alaskan gamekeepers describe people shooting at herds - maiming some caribou and leaving others to waste their meat. In one season, 10,000 caribou were killed by hunters on a game reserve in Alaska. As one administrator wrote: "Most people are content to believe that animals are innumerable." By the 1930s, the herds were in serious decline. Wolves and wildfires exacerbated the herd's free fall, and by the 1940s there were fewer than 20,000. The herd recovered somewhat in the 1960s, only to decline again. By 1975, only 5,000 people remained, according to the Yukon government.
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The once extensive core of caribou in the mountains between Dawson City and Fairbanks has shrunk.
Driven by decades of restoration work, the Fortymile herd is 10 times larger than it was in the 1970s. However, no corresponding increase in herd coverage was observed. It's hard to say why. A network of mines extending south from Dawson City may have prevented caribou from passing through this habitat, but there are other explanations. As climate change warms the north, trees and shrubs are growing higher. This means that the upland migration corridors, the areas above the highways that once opened up the central Yukon, may have been overexploited by caribou. The old range of the forty herds and the roads leading to it may be collectively remembered. We have to learn to migrate, and that knowledge may have died out with the last caribou to enter the central Yukon decades and decades ago.
The inability of the herd to regain its old range means that the caribou are tightly packed into their core range. Some biologists suspect that the herd has exceeded the carrying capacity of the ecosystem in which it lives—essentially there is not enough grass, brush, and grubs to sustain 80,000 caribou. Inadequate forage makes it difficult for cows to give birth and calves to survive. Another population is on the verge of collapse. This has prompted wildlife managers in Alaska to hunt more to reduce herds. The Yukon government and Trondek Huachin First Nation recently agreed to a new state management plan that would include non-First Nation hunters hunting small game. This is a new era for Fortymile Caribou.
A draft Mineral Resources and Land Use Plan for the Dawson area has been submitted to show where and how development will proceed. Photo: Malcolm Bothroyd
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The mountains around Dawson City slowly rise as you head west into Alaska, slowly stripping away the mantle of the mountain pine forest. These tundra ridges are the summer home of herds. In the windy heights there is freedom from mosquitoes, grubs and weeds. Forty-mile caribou give birth along the Alaskan border, then in late June and early July large caribou herds migrate to the Yukon, leaving the valley full of elk and elk.
Most of these lines are lined with mine roads, with mines set in valleys and heavily patrolled properties in the Alps. More than a quarter of the herd's core range
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