Forty Mile Feed - Current land use planning for a herd range allows for volatile populations to be kept on track
As a result of land use planning in the area around Dawson City, the Yukon's four-mile caribou herd may be significantly affected.
Forty Mile Feed
About twenty caribou blocked the road. I pull to the shoulder and stop. It's a warm July day at the top of the world's highway, about 90 kilometers northwest of Dawson City, Yukon. A light mist hangs in the air, smoke from wildfires burning on the Alaska border.
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It was a herd of four thousand caribou. Some caribou were lying on the gravel, while others were standing with three-week-old calves around their legs. Thorns still cover the bulls' horns. Several hundred other caribou are scattered on the slopes, and there are a few dozen among the scattered alders that supply the rocky areas above the highway.
The rest of the evening passes slowly. It was only after three hours of waiting for a hundred caribou to clear the highway a few kilometers back that I got back on the road. 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 guys Chase Everitt and Chris Clark are parked. Chase is a fish and wildlife technician and a resident of Trondheim Hwach. Chris works on the First Nations Land Stewardship Program.
The next moment I'm distracted by the screeching of wheels going over gravel. I look up just in time to see a white SUV around the corner towards us. The vehicle accelerates without slowing down, quickly closing the gap to the caribou. Chris honks his truck's horn, and finally the SUV stops and turns toward us. "There are laws against harassing wildlife," Chase, a clean-cut guy with gray hair and an Alberta plate, tells the driver. "You have to wait until the caribou moves off the road."
He starts talking about the public health measures taken to control the coronavirus pandemic and then goes back to the caribou. He suggests that he should be allowed to do what he likes.
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There are stories of forty thousand caribou that took several days to cross the Yukon River a hundred years ago. Paddle-wheelers navigating the river between Whitehorse and Dawson must wait for the caribou to pass. From numbers in the hundreds of thousands, to a few thousand in the 1970s, the herd has suffered from terrible accidents and spikes in the meantime. Concerted efforts to restore the population began in the 1990s. Wildlife officials in Alaska began an extensive program to suppress predators, and Yukon and Trondheim hunters stopped harvesting the Hwach herd. By 2017, the herd had grown back to over 80,000 caribou.
The author's companions, Chris Clark and Chase Everitt, waited for the caribou to move off the road and let them drive. Photo: Malcolm Boothroyd
There's something poetic about a four-mile herd recovering enough to stop traffic again, but our Albertan friend doesn't seem amused. He pulled a U-turn and jumped towards Dawson, waving his middle finger at us as he disappeared.
The caribou is one of the forty thousand animals that everyone else circles around. Bears and wolves follow the rise of the herd, and the footprints of countless generations of caribou are etched into the mountains. Forty thousand caribou held the Trondheim Hwachin, and caribou meat helped feed the tens of thousands of prospectors who came north during the Klondike Gold Rush. This overhunting by newcomers pushed the herd into crisis, and wiped out the First Nation's harvest. The four-mile caribou may be gone for a while, but it brings new hope and new fears.
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I come here hoping to get pictures and videos of caribou to use in my advocacy work with the Yukon chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wildlife Association. The Yukon is in the midst of a land use plan for the Dawson area that will determine which parts of the herd's range will be protected and how much development can occur in the other areas. This is a critical time for the four-mile caribou. Some biologists worry that a lack of food within the herd's range could trigger further population declines. At the same time, new mining developments could overwhelm the remaining area of the herd. The next few years will shape the herd's future for decades to come.
Land use planning for the Dawson area is still a work in progress, but the draft plan shows the different levels of development allowed within the core area of the Fortymile caribou herd. Map: Malcolm Boothroyd / CPAWS Yukon Chapter
The memory of the four-mile caribou still lives on in the landscapes they inhabited. Although herds have not been seen on these lands for more than 60 years, there are ancient caribou tracks along the mountains in the Dawson Range. The herd once straddled central Yukon and Alaska, some wintering as far south as Whitehorse. A traveler described a canoe down the White River in 1909, where “for forty miles we ran through continuous caribou. The valley was narrow on either side and the tall, bald mountains swarmed with animals. In the 1920s, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the herd numbered 250,000."
The rapid four-mile caribou hunt began in the early 20th century and accelerated in the 1930s when new roads opened up to the Highlands for hunters. Historical accounts by game officers in Alaska described people shooting into herds—some decimating caribou, others consuming the dead meat. In one season, 10,000 caribou were killed by hunters in one game area in Alaska. One conservationist wrote, “Most people think that animals are unstable in number. ” In the 1930s, the cowboy suffered a major decline. Wolves and wildfires would worsen the herd's decline, and by 1940 there were less than 20,000 left. By 1960 the herd had recovered somewhat, and then fell back down again. In 1975, only about 5,000 remained, according to the Yukon government.
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In the mountains between Dawson City and Fairbanks, the vast range of forty thousand caribou has shrunk to a core.
Thanks to decades of recovery efforts, the Fortymile herd has 10 times more caribou than it did in the 1970s. However, there was no corresponding increase in the herd area. It's hard to say why. Networks of tunnels extending south from Dawson City may have prevented caribou from crossing these habitats, but there are other explanations. Trees and shrubs thrive at ever higher altitudes as climate change warms the north. That means the alpine migration corridors, the areas above the railroad that once opened up the central Yukon, may be too desolate for caribou to use. It is possible that the Quarry herd lost its collective memory of the old range and the paths that led to it. Migration must be learned, and this knowledge probably died out with the last caribou that entered the central Yukon decades and decades ago.
The herd's failure to re-establish its former range means that caribou are tightly packed into its core range. Some biologists suspect that the herd has exceeded the carrying capacity of the ecosystems it inhabits, as there is not enough grass, sedge and lichen to sustain 80,000 caribou. Cows are less likely to give birth due to lack of food, and the calves born have a harder time surviving. There are fears of another population crash. This forced wildlife managers in Alaska to hunt more to reduce the herd's size. The Yukon government and the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in First Nation recently agreed to a new management plan that includes small-scale hunting for non-First Nations hunters. It's a new era for the four-mile caribou.
A mine bet in Dawson County, where a draft land use plan has been submitted, explaining where and how development could proceed. Photo: Malcolm Boothroyd
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The mountains around Dawson City gradually rise as one heads west towards Alaska, and the peaks gradually begin to clear the mantle of the boreal forest. These tundra ridges are the heart of the herd's summer habitat. Wind slopes offer relief from mosquitoes and lichens and grasses. Forty-mile caribou give birth across the border in Alaska, and then in late June and early July large herds of caribou move into the Yukon, following ridge lines to avoid the spruce and alder that fill the valleys.
Many of these ridges are lined with mine roads, leading to placer mines in the valleys and hard rock exploration buildings in the Alpines. More than a quarter of the middle area of the herd
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