DR. TOM BERGERUD

I have been around quite a while. I was the fellow that censused the George River herd in 1958. And the Naskaupi and the Davis Inlet were at Mistastin that time and I stopped in and talked to Chief Joe Rich. I also censused the Red Wine Herd in '58. I did calving studies on the George in '78. I did a range study on the George in '88. My PhD student has done energy budgets on the George for the last four years. And Newfoundland has turned over all the data that they gathered for the last 20 years to me and we are preparing a book, a hard cover book on the George River herd.

I thought I would talk about the population dynamics of the Red Wine herd and the George River and so you can draw your own conclusions as to whether disturbance is affecting these parameters. I always try to make all my arguments with data and overheads. I have been accused of flipping overheads very fast and that is a valid criticism. I never can seem to make my timeframe. So I am going to start flipping the overheads now talking about the population dynamics of the Red Wine first.

The Red Wine -- caribou in general are affected by the abundance of moose. Moose bring on more wolves, they increase the prey biomass and when we get high densities of moose, we loose our caribou herds.

So here is the post glacial dispersal of moose in Ungava. It is the last place in North America where we are still expanding from the end of the little Ice Age. So I just want to point out that moose have been moving in and have been moving into the Red Wine area.

This is the calving ground of the Leaf. This is the calving ground of the George. And these are contours of moose dispersal.

This is the distribution of the sedentary herds in Ungava. This is the northern limit of the sedentary herds. I have published and have in press -- it is determined by the presence of open water as an antipredator strategy for these caribou. The sedentary caribou disperse out at calving as their antipredator strategy.

The southern boundary of the sedentary caribou herd is determined by moose. Where we have got moose density greater than .1 per kilometre square, we loose our caribou. That raises up the wolves per 1,000 kilometres past 7 per 1,000 kilometres which is too much for caribou to exist.

The Harp Lake herd was mentioned. Back in the '50s and the '60s when I was working here, there was a Harp Lake herd. There was a White Bear Lake herd. As far as I am concerned, they both went extinct from over hunting. The over hunting followed the invention of the skidoo. When the dog team went out, the mobility of hunters greatly increased and there are documented harvest figures from the Harp Lake herd that it just could not take that kind of a harvest.

I want you to notice that the moose density next to the Red Wine is .07. That is getting to be a pretty serious density, bringing in a high density of wolves and the highest density that we have got north of the continuous distribution of caribou. These are densities of moose. These are the number of caribou in the different herds at last count.

Now, there are not herds. There is a continuous band of caribou. They spread out. We just use herds because of management purposes.

The caribou are also gone over around the James Bay side from over hunting and they are gone from this side from over hunting. But there is -- but there should be a continuous band. Some of these large hydro developments have really broken up the band. But the Smallwood Reserve really breaks up the Red Wine and the Lac Joseph.

Predation is density dependent. You have got to be far apart with your calves at parturition to beat wolf predation. You have got to have what we call stabilizing recruitment. You have got to have 15 per cent calves to maintain your numbers. And 15 per cent usually comes at a density of .06 per kilometre square. You have got to be very far apart, very low density. The low densities of the Red Wine, the low densities of the Mealys, the low densities of the Lac Joseph are normal. And they apply to other caribou herds in North America.

This is a curvilinear line. As the density goes up, the recruitment goes down. As you get closer and closer together calving, the wolves find you more and more frequently.

I point out that the Red Wine has a good calf percentage compared to some of these herds: the Lac Bienville, the Caniapiscau. But it is paying the price for this because it is only at a .03 per kilometre square. If it was up at a .07 per kilometre square, it would be predicted that it would have a lower recruitment and would probably be decreasing.

These are the population statistics available on these herds. All the sedentary caribou across the Ungava Peninsula and I just have the Red Wine area. It has normal parameters. It has a normal adult saturation, with saturation is usually two to one caribou because males select more risky spots to forage. It has a pregnancy percentage similar to other herds. It has a mortality rate similar to other herds and it has a good calf percentage compared to other herds.

I would like to make the argument that the Red Wine has always been low. Back in 1903 when Mrs. Hubbard was trying to find the passage north to Mischimogoo (phonetic) and the George River and the year before when her husband starved they were in the heart of the Red Wine range in the summer when they are dispersed. And in 218 days they saw 12 caribou.

I censused the Red Wine herd in '58 and the census was 900 caribou, not much different than it is now. So we have got to expect these low densities. They are part of woodland caribou, of the sedentary lifestyle of reducing predation risks by being dispersed.

That is the end of the presentation of the RedWine.

This is the George River herd. Recruitment is the percentage of calves at 10 to 12 months of age in April, June. Mortality of course is adults. For herds to maintain its numbers, the recruits, the valid increment has to equal the adult mortality.

Here is the recruitment for the 20 years of data that Newfoundland has gathered. Here is the mortality rate of adults. So for many years, we had great recruitment. We had all these calves. We had low adult mortality and the herd grew. The herd grew at a finite rate of increase of 1.11. When you take the number of caribou this year and multiply it by 1.11 and that is what you are supposed to have next year. That is called a finite rate of increase.

The wolves are coming on. The wolves are coming on and in 1980, as far as I am concerned, the wolves stopped the herd growth of the George River herd. I have statistics on the wolf harvest in Ungava, the Arctic fox harvest, the red fox harvest and also we have an index of wolves based on the Newfoundland Wildlife Division. They are all related. They are all correlated.

Then the northern canides in Ungava get rabies every few years. So the herd was balanced at about 300,000 caribou, which is still reasonably good for the range. The wolves got rabies. The Arctic fox got rabies. The red fox got rabies. There is two years in which Stu Luttich, the former biologist did not see a wolf on six survey flights. The wolf harvest in Kuujjuag and Nain went down very low. The wolf pack size dropped in half.

Well, the caribou herd escaped the predation limitation and went on with two big cohorts, the animals that went over the Limestone Falls were very heavy towards the '82 cohort. It was a tremendous cohort and it took the herd from 300,000 to 600,000 bringing about the degradation of the range -- the summer range, the above tree line range. And I have done a range study on the summer range.

Now, with this summer food problem, the mortality rate and it is a stronger statistic than this statistic, is above the recruitment. The herd -- the George River herd has declined. As far as I am concerned, it has declined 200,000 animals from the peak population.

I worked with a group on mortality statistics all across North America with different caribou herds, and in my view they are a better prediction of population than our census. We have got a lot of terrible census counts in North America. And the recruitment mortality statistics are very strong for theGeorge, big samples classified and large number of females with radios.

I have calculated adult mortality by halving female calves per hundred cows. To avoid the males, I have a formula for working out the male mortality rate and adding it. And in either case, mortality far exceeds recruitment. The herd had to go down.

So that is the basic demography of the George River herd as far as I am concerned increasing for many years, being slowed down in its growth by predation, being halted temporarily, an outbreak of rabies, going on to overgraze the summer range, not the winter range and decreasing.

Just a couple of figures on the range as it is spread out here. There is kind of a core area. The caribou goes above tree line to avoid predators. That is their antipredator strategy of going to a calving ground away from tree line. Wolves den more frequently at tree line. Here we have out of 19 years, the caribou calved in that grid 16 of the 19 years. They show contagious behaviour. They want to go back to the calving ground even though it is overgrazed. They are prepared to take the overgrazing to avoid the predation risk.

The winter range is different. They spread out, I will show in a minute that the winter, that the spreading out is really based on where they rut. But here are the lines showing how they have spread out. And as this herd goes down in numbers, it is going to pull away. It has already pulled away from a lot of settlements. There is a lot of settlements now that are not harvesting George River caribou any more over on the other side of this peninsula. They are harvesting Leaf River animals.

This commercial hunt that might be going on in Kuujjuaq is going to be involved with Leaf River. Because when this herd gets small enough, it is not going to go by Kuujjuaq any more.

There are a number of -- the big thing is whether this herd is going to crash or whether it is going to stable out. And there are a lot of parameters that I think show that the herd is starting to stable itself. There are a lot of parameters that are getting better and they support my view that the herd has decreased. Because why would it be getting better if it had not decreased and the range was getting better. And they support the fact, the recruitment mortality statistics suggest that we have had a major decline.

I will go through a few of these. Here are the kilometres the caribou have travelled in a year. They aretravelling less far, that is less energy, that is more back fat, more good condition. As the herd gets smaller, it retreats to what we call the centre of habitation, that is its strong place where it makes its stand at low numbers and that is at the above tree line Labrador country. So the herd is going less far. It is also walking slower.

Here is a figure. How did it expand its range? There is a significant correlation between the centre of calving and the rut -- the next rut. This is the time that the caribou herd has to make its fat reserves. They cannot make them during the bug season. They have got to make them between the end of the oestrid flies and the beginning of snow. They have got to make them August 14th to October 20th, October 30th.

And this is a density dependent function. When the warble and nose flies quit, the caribou start walking usually going across the tree line, getting off the overgrazed range and they start putting on weight. And this is a significant relationship that peaks in '84 and has had no slope to it since, which supports again the recruitment mortality fact that there has been a decline.

The rut to winter has no relationship. Where they are in the winter is partly a function of where they were in the rut and partly a function of how much snow falls. They are not spreading themselves out relative to the lichen biomass. They are spreading themselves out relative to the fall range.

There are a number of -- here are all the animals that have been autopsied through the years. Here is the back fat -- 1,700 animals. A lot of these animals collected by the commercial hunt at Nain. Back fat -- how much back fat you have got depends upon how far you have migrated.

Here are the short migration, when the caribou is not very far away in the winter. He comes back to the George River country with more back fat. He does not have to use his bone marrow to prevent starvation. With a long migration, he comes back with no back fat and his bone marrow goes down.

And we have had summer starvation of the George in the summertime. We had one animal swim across the river and die right in front of us. There is a collection in which the mean marrow fat is 26 per cent which is considered starvation. Those worst years are gone, it looks like. We are now into the short migration again and we are not seeing the low back fat. Again, an indication that conditions have improved.

Here is the weight curve back in '76 in the days before the range was overgrazed. Here is the weight curve offemales in the spring in the years of overgrazing, the peak population. And here are the weight curves of the last five years. They have improved. The weight of the animals has improved.

So there is considerable physical information that suggests that the herd overgrazed its summer range, declined in numbers and it is now in a better physical condition.

We have measured the birch rings. Thirty-five (35) per cent of the birch above tree line has been killed by caribou. Twenty (20) per cent of the ground above tree line is turf because of caribou feet. But the birch rings are getting wider. Birch is doing better.

A better study than this was presented at the sixth workshop in which Payette of Laval University showed that the scars, on the birch and large spruce along caribou trails, most scars made on these two trees along trail was in '86, '87, '88 and '89. Again, a peak population. They are scarring the conifers less than they did a few years back. So both birch and conifer scarring suggest a lower population.

Here are the energy budget that my PhD student has done. It is a very complicated thing. There is 68 formulas that go into this. You know we measure bugs, we measure bite size, we measure metres per five minutes, we measuring running, standing, walking. We put the satellite data into all this, and, you know, when the bugs are bad we are in a very negative balance. When the mosquitos are bad, of course, we are in a very negative energy balance.

When the warble flies come out, it can be good or it can be bad depending upon whether this is a bad or good warble day. Warbles are not as serious as the mosquitoes because warbles like to go to bed at night and the caribou can feed at night.

The major finding from our energy budgets is the dry matter intake of the caribou is increased. Again, this supports the idea that the herd is decreased and is now in better shape. This is one of our very strongest pieces of evidence based on literally thousands of measurements. There is no way my student could phoney this data. There is so many equations that he does not know what the answer is going to be until it comes out of the computer at the end of the calculations.

And it is the June dry matter intake that is improving. That is the gramanoids, the grasses and that is the best index because the July and August is amassed by changes in mosquitoes and changes in warbles between years.

Now, there are a lot of other indices that we have at our hands, but here is kind of a summary. Back fat has improved, marrow has improved, body weight has improved, birch rings have improved, there is less scars, dry matter intake. When the George River was at its worst condition, it was coming into oestrid 10 days later. They were calving on June 12th when they should have been calving on June 4th. Last year we had the first indication that the rut was going back to when it was supposed to be and the calving date is moving forward. The Leaf River still calves around June 4th.

When they are in bad condition, they want to get off the tree line as fast as they can. They want to get across the tree line. So in the early years, they were crossing the tree line as soon as the mosquitoes were not too bad. They were crossing in July. And in more recent years they have been crossing in August. They have been staying on the overgrazed range longer, another good indication.

The size of the -- the kilometres travelled, I do not have the figure here but I have all of Ungava gridded off into squares and I can talk about how fast the caribou go through each grid. And I have tried to do a range study in each grid and measure the snow depth in each grid and they are definitely walking through some of these grids slower than they used to. They are not on the run as much as they used to be. And of course, as the herd goes down their range contracts. And that has happened. The '92-'93 winter range is the smallest winter range we have had for years.

So in my view, the herd has decreased and I think that we should view with suspicion the census work that was done in '93. There is a lot of problems with that. Ninety-three ('93) is a very strange year, very unfortunate that that was the year to count. In the whole 20 years that was the year there was the least snow. In the whole 20 years that was the only year in which we had mosquitoes out on June 14th the day of calving.

The whole herd got up and left the calving grounds, the traditional calving ground and went to the coast. And they were all moving during this census. And one of the cardinal principles of counting caribou on calving grounds is that you do it in peak calving when the old lady is tied to the calf and is not moving. And the caribou were really moving during the census. The satellites show that.

When they stratify the calving ground and get their high density and their low density, they did not come back and take the photographs till 10 and 15 days later, and, in fact, the whole high density area was empty. The whole southern end of the high density was empty. They had already moved to the coast.

Another problem that caribou biologists do not seem to tackle very often is that we have exchange between herds. It has happened in the N.W.T. between the Beverley and Kaminuriak and it is happening here. In '88, the census in '88 on the George, 22 per cent of the radios were from the Leaf River caribou herd. There were only five radios left in the Leaf in '93 and two of them were Leaf River cows.

We have had a satellite cow on the George go all the way to the Leaf and calve and then we have it come all the way back. We have had a satellite cow leave the George and go up in the Torngat and live for a couple of years and then come back.

So I think in this very unusual year, was the Leaf River herd. Where were they going to beat the insects when the insects came out early? And at least two out of five, 40 per cent of the ones that were left were included in the George River census.

So that is one of the reasons I came to this conference I guess it is a completely forlorn hope, I came to this conference hoping that I could talk DND or the Newfoundland government into doing a winter census in which we now have satellites on both of the herds. And the winter range, as far as I am concerned, is far apart.

Let's do a winter census when we can show with good radios that indeed there is no satellites from the Leaf mixed up with the George. But everybody has said we have done the big census now and the big bucks have been spent. And I have to make the decision in this book of whether I am going to -- I am not going to go with the Quebec census.

There is the Renewable Resource census which is a lot less than the Quebec census. And remember Quebec always adds the calves to their census figures. No, calves are not valid. They cannot be added. They have not lived a year. They are not a valid recruitment. October calves are not valid. You talk about the adults in June when you make a count. Because a lot of those calves are going to die. They are more vulnerable to predation.

I can show that the over winter mortality is increased because of the poor condition. I can show the jaw bones of the George are a lot smaller. We have high, even though there is not a lot of wolves in Ungava, a heck of a lot of calves die over winter and it is not from starvation. We can show from the marrow samples that we do not have starvation in April and May. We have starvation in the summer not when you get back to east and predation is doing it.

I just wanted to say something aboutdisturbance. There is a lot of extrinsic things out there and in my view, if you have ever watched caribou, the mosquitoes and the warbles are far more disturbing that anything else.

You can have a day in which the warbles are driving the caribou crazy all day and the next day you can have no warbles. And that variability is so great and the caribou have the resilience of that that one day -- one bad day of warbles is equal to all the overflights as far as I am concerned.

If we want to -- these are energy budgets between mosquitoes present and mosquitoes absent, consecutive days. And these are warbles. This is a positive budget. You have more intake than you have expenditure. Expenditures go up when you have more intake because the animals have to use the energy to digest their food, not because they are running more.

So there is great variability, and trying to put it in a nutshell to maybe antagonize people, I would say the insects are by far the greatest disturbance to caribou, predators are next, caribou biologists are next. I have bothered caribou an awful lot in my life chasing them with a helicopter and they do not care for that -- and skidoos are bad. There have been studies in the western Arctic showing skidoos are very bad especially when they have men on them with guns and caribou do not appreciate that. And way down the line is the disturbance from aircraft.

The two most disturbed herds are the Delta herd, where I have been on the Delta herd studying it. I have been there when big black Huey helicopters came over and the caribou did not even look up. They had an artillery range there too and there were shells and targets. There was a target where I was camped.

The Delta herd increased. In 1977 it had 2,500 animals. In 1989 it increased to 10,200. A tremendous rate of increase. A control herd next to it the Yanert herd which had no disturbance did not increase.

The Central Arctic herd is this herd we have all heard so much about where they built an oil field in the middle of the calving ground. It had 5,000 caribou in 1977 and 16,000 in 1989. The caribou got along quite well with the oil fields. The oil field has been there so long now, there is not a caribou alive that remembers the good old days.

One of the things that happened at the oil field was that the oil field people shot the wolves and that helped the caribou. The control herd for the Central Arctic is the Porcupine next door. And it had increased at the same time from '77 to '89, it increased from 100,000 to 175,000, half the growth rate of the Central Arctic herd. And yet it has all this massiveinfrastructure of oil wells and trucks on roads and then pipe lines and things that caribou have a difficult time getting across.

Well, I love this herd. It has been a real privilege in my life to spend my whole career to see it grow from 15,000 to the greatest herd in the world. And I am as upset as local hunters in seeing a jet come over. And I think that is one of the great biases that all of us caribou biologists have. We do not like the jets and we therefore assume that the caribou cannot get along with them.

And I do not see any reason why we have got to put up with those jets coming across. There are other places they can fly. Let this great marvel of this earth not have jets. But let us not have this crutch that it is the caribou that cannot take this, because caribou are very adaptable, very resilient animals. And I was just thinking the other day, that day at Mastintin in 1958 when I talked to Chief Joe Rich, he might have imagined something like this, 15,000 to 600,000, but I never had it as a thought.

Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, Dr. Bergerud. I think I just do not know enough about it, but you are very convincing to somebody like me who just knows a certain amount. Anyway it is fun.

You remind me of my old Geography professor, Griffith Taylor, who was a world famous geographer at that time. He was the first geographer who taught much in Canada. And he had the whole world explained by slides with graphs going one way and dark spots another. And he certainly convinced us. It is all geographic determinism, that was his speciality. So I am very susceptible to these kinds of slides I guess. I have early training on them.

Well, I think what we should do is have the final paper and then have discussion so we have what people wanted to say before us and then we will have a while to talk about them.

Can I call next on Dr. Fred Harrington.

Now, we have seen you before, Dr. Harrington. You were the chap who turned on the set there. Perhaps you would just say a word about yourself. I do not have anything. I know of you but I cannot really tell about your career or whatever.