Feces, hair samples replace intrusive tracking methods

Hunters and youth from Gjoa Haven will head onto the ice of McClintock Channel this spring to gather polar bear hair and feces and photograph their giant tracks.

They've found a way of studying polar bears that avoids pumping the animals full of tranquilizing drugs or pinning electronic tracking devices onto their bodies.

Sponsored by the Hunters and Trappers Association of Gjoa Haven, the study will use a combination of genetics, bear tracks, and feces to estimate the numbers of bears in the McClintock Channel and gather information, about their health, sex, size and age.

At last week's Nunavut Wildlife Management Board meeting in Iqaluit, Willie Aglukkaq of Gjoa Haven's brandished a tiny dart that he and others involved in the project will use to sample polar bear fat.

Analyses of the fat, along the fur and feces, can help researchers discover what the polar bears are eating, whether they're stressed or sick, or if certain groups are related.

Aglukkaq explained that shooting the dart into the polar bear won't require any tranquilizing, a practice that has been under fire from hunters who say the drugging traumatizes the bears and taints their meat.

With the small dart, all hunters need is a good aim, Aglukkaq said. The polar bear will only feel the dart "like a mosquito bite," he said.

After that, the dart falls out of the bear's body and can be collected for study by a researcher.

Gjoa Haven hunters are working closely with Peter de Groot, a biologist from Queen's University, who has studied many large mammals, from hippos to muskox.

De Groot also attended the NWMB meeting, where he told members that he hopes the project will help fine-tune polar bear survey methods that involve no drugging or tagging.

"We want a survey that can be executed by any community," De Groot told the NWMB.

A survey conducted in the year 2000 showed that only 288 polar bears roamed the McClintock Channel, down from earlier estimates of 700.

The survey indicated that, without a reduction in the hunt, the population would decline and be reduced to zero within 10 years.

To allow the population to recover, the United States banned the importation of all new polar bear trophies from McClintock Sound, and Nunavut placed a moratorium on the subsistence hunting there.

The new survey may help prove whether or not the polar bear population in the McClintock Channel is recovering – using non-intrusive methods.

This spring, researchers plan to set up hair traps in a 600-kilometre area around King William Island.

The hair traps, which look like fences, will catch polar bear hair samples that can be collected and analyzed later by researchers.

A German film crew plans to join the team to tell about polar bear research from the Inuit perspective.

The NWMB's chairperson, Harry Flaherty, welcomed what he called "a new way of doing polar bear surveys."

The new approach means no drugging of wildlife and more Inuit involvement in how research is done.

At the meeting NWMB members expressed their suspicions about university researchers, that they steal Inuit knowledge and use it for their own benefit, often don't provide information to HTOs and rely on faulty, careless ways to gather information.

"Inuit don't understand research and science as important because they have the information already," said Peter Awa of Pond Inlet.

By the end of the meeting, after hearing about several projects submitted by HTOs, with lots of Inuit involvement and non-invasive methods, Awa said it looked like Inuit were starting to agree more with non-Inuit on how to conduct research.

Mathieu Dumont, a biologist with the Government of Nunavut, who uses non-invasive research techniques for wolverines and grizzlies in the Kitikmeot, was also encouraged.

"I think there is a lot of hope that we can all work towards the same goal which is healthy wildlife," Dumont told the NWMB.

The Polar Continental Shelf Project has already committed 12 hours of flight time to the Gjoa Haven study, worth $45,000. These savings will be plowed back into hiring youth and hunters.

The total budget for the project is $108,000, $30,000 of which will come from the NMWB.

The HTO will also receive $500,000 from the federal government's $85-million fund to help Arctic research facilities. This money will be used to renovate four hunter cabins for research use by the HTO.

The NWMB meeting had more than $1 million in research money to give away, but its members were unenthusiastic about supporting projects that rely on invasive research techniques such as tranquilizers, tagging, or aerial surveys.