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Nunavik groups worry as species at risk act looms

No recovery plan, no beluga hunting

ODILE NELSON

Nunavimmiut officials voiced strong concerns last week that the federal government’s upcoming Species at Risk Act will bring an abrupt end to traditional beluga harvests in the Ungava Bay and Eastern Hudson Bay areas.

The latest draft of Canada’s endangered species act, which now stands before the Senate and is expected to pass in the near future, officially establishes an arms-length wildlife management body that will classify all wildlife as either extinct, endangered, threatened, of special concern, or not at risk.

Any species the board classifies as endangered or threatened then becomes illegal to hunt, capture or destroy.

Inuit leaders fear the act, known as Bill C-5, could outlaw an essential part of traditional Inuit life, since the proposed list already names the Ungava beluga population as endangered and the Eastern Hudson Bay population as threatened.

The federal government’s latest numbers suggest there are less than 200 beluga in the Ungava population and about 4,000 in the Eastern Hudson group. Nunavik hunters, however, dispute these numbers.

Paulusi Novalinga, head of the Nunavik Hunters, Fishers and Trappers Association, said he and his colleagues from Makivik Corporation and the Kativik Regional Government brought their concerns to representatives from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans at the first meeting of the newly-formed "beluga recovery team" on Dec. 3-4 in Kuujjuaq.

"If that bill is passed it’s going to affect all our beluga harvest," Novalinga said in an interview this week. "[I told them] if they’re going to totally say that there won’t be any more beluga harvest, I am afraid that my people might react to that negatively. I say that as a peacekeeper between the government and my people. It’s a sensitive matter that has to do with our tradition and culture. That’s what’s at stake. Beluga is part of our heritage."

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans decided to establish a recovery team for the two beluga populations at the beginning of this year. However the group, which consists of that KRG, Makivik, NHTA, DFO and Nunavut wildlife representatives, only met for the first time last week.

Anne Lagacé, one of the two DFO representatives on the team, said it was always the federal department’s plan to establish a recovery team for the Nunavik beluga populations that would consult heavily with Nunavik’s Inuit.

But with the approval of Bill C-5 looming, she said the need to have a recovery plan in place became more pressing.

"The act doesn’t make it necessary to have a team in place right now. But once the act is passed there will be a very short deadline to put recovery teams in place and develop strategies [before hunting of an endangered or threatened species is outlawed]," Lagacé said.

Lagacé stressed the act is still in draft form and that its wording remains incomplete. At this point, she said, it is very difficult to assess how developed the team’s recovery strategies would have to be to avoid a complete ban on beluga hunting.

But she also said the prohibitions would not be enforced in the same way for aboriginal subsistence hunting, if the team could develops concrete actions to alleviate the pressure on the two beluga populations.

"The Species at Risk Act is based on wording of land claims agreements, in that it says aboriginal people will be able to continue hunting species at risk if conservation principles... are met. Then hunting could be allowed to a certain extent," Lagacé said. "Putting in place the recovery team is one way to see that actions will be taken, or suggested I should say, so that the conservation principle is met for those two endangered populations."

Novalinga, however, said DFO officials at the meeting could not promise the recovery team’s suggestions would prevent a complete moratorium on beluga hunting when the act is passed.

The recovery team will meet again in the spring and hopes to have a firm list of suggestions in place for the 2004 hunting season.

No one at Environment Canada could be reached to confirm when Bill C-5 would be passed.

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