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Inuit hunters fear effects of federal wildlife legislation

Is Species at Risk Act in conflict with whale harvest?

ODILE NELSON

Nunavik hunters butcher a beluga they've just harvested. (FILE PHOTO)

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Inuit fears that the new federal Species at Risk Act could affect traditional whale harvests were not quelled by a government-organized public information session held in Iqaluit last week.

Representatives from Environment Canada, the department of fisheries and oceans, and the SARA office gave an overview of the new legislation at a session in Iqaluit Sept. 3.

But at least one Inuit representative left the meeting with lingering questions about how and if the new law will conflict with traditional whale hunts, including the bowhead hunt that is protected under the Nunavut land claims agreement.

"There's another thing we have to keep in mind and that's the Nunavut land claim is also in effect and that might be fighting with the Species at Risk Act," said Solomon Awa, a executive director of the Qikiqtaaluk Wildlife Board, in an interview after the session. "We don't want to be fighting each year about hunts."

The SARA, a new law designed to protect threatened and endangered species in Canada, was given royal assent in December 2002 and proclaimed this past June. The government is introducing the law in stages beginning this year.

The law requires the assessing and listing of animals and ensuring animals that are listed as threatened or endangered are protected through harvesting bans and/or mandatory recovery or action plans.

The first step in the process is for the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) to evaluate an animal or plant species using scientific information, as well as community and aboriginal traditional knowledge of a species.

The board then makes a recommendation to the federal government as to whether the animal should be listed as not at risk, of special concern, threatened, endangered, extirpated (extinct in Canada) or extinct.

If the federal government agrees to list a species as threatened or endangered as of June 2004, it will immediately become illegal to kill or harm the species or its habitat, on areas under federal jurisdiction. These areas include oceans.

Mandatory recovery plans must also be developed within a limited time after species are listed.

A provision under SARA allows for "limited harm" to listed animals for such things as traditional harvests as long as "the activities do not jeopardize species survival or recovery."

Yet this provision offers little comfort to Awa.

COSEWIC has already assessed 233 species and these are on SARA's first list of wildlife species at risk. The committee has also identified another 39 species as extirpated, endangered or threatened, but needing reassessment before they are added to SARA's official list.

These 39 species include the eastern and western Arctic bowhead whale and beluga whale populations in Ungava Bay, southeast Baffin Island-Cumberland Sound, and eastern Hudson Bay. They must be reassessed within the next three years.

Awa is not confident that the provision for "limited harm" will protect the Inuit traditional hunt of bowhead or beluga whales if they are added to SARA's official list.

The bowhead hunt is protected under the Nunavut land claims agreement, Awa said, and he expects the hunt will become part of the whale's recovery plan under SARA. But Awa said he could still see the federal government reducing the harvest.

"Maybe the hunt would become part of the recovery plan. But they could say we could kill a bowhead every two years, not every year, as part of the plan [they set up]," he said.

And while the agreement specifically protects the Inuit right to hunt bowhead whales, it does not do the same thing for beluga.

However, Ruth Wherry, director of the SARA office, said though there is a chance the legislation will interfere with current whale harvest quotas in Nunavut, it is slight at best.

"It's within the realm of possibilities. Who can say? It is highly unlikely because it [quotas] was done with DFO to begin with," she said.

And if Nunavut has an agreement guaranteeing a bowhead whale harvest, Wherry said it should simply become a part of a recovery plan's limited harm provisions.

"This is what we want and this is why we developed legislation that encourages stewardship and cooperation," she said.

Awa said it is now up to Inuit to work with COSEWIC to ensure their concerns are respected and to prevent species from being listed unnecessarily.

"So now we have to work with COSEWIC and get all organizations and elders aboard to work with COSEWIC whether or not to get specific species on the list," he said.

He is optimistic the board will listen.

"I think the voices are becoming heard now from the aboriginal people. And I believe there will be more respect for the elders when the elders offer their traditional knowledge," Awa said.

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