Effects of satellite collars "minimal," say biologists

But some Dene communities still feel collaring caribou is wrong

(Caribou News, June 1996)

They weigh in at about 1.3 kilograms, and have settled in recent years into a sleek teardrop-shape for a more comfortable, natural fit. Satellite collars, after being used for close to a decade to track caribou in Canada, have won over ardent fans among biologists and many hunters. The satellite signals that feed into computers lead hunters directly to their source of food. Biologists, meanwhile, are able to monitor migration patterns, and better pinpoint calving grounds and the caribou for field surveys.

But not all traditional users are so enthusiastic. The collars are distrusted by some Dene, particularly by elders who feel it is wrong and unnatural to attach an object to an animal. They also fear the collars -- or the process of putting the collars on -- will hurt the caribou.

SUPPORT DIVIDED

Since five Qamanirjuaq cows were collared in a GNWT pilot project three years ago, local support has been voiced by the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board, the Keewatin Wildlife Federation, and the Kivalliq Inuit Association, where the land use department finds satellite collar tracking keeps them up to date on where the caribou are migrating.

Even most Dene hunters from Tadoule Lake in northern Manitoba, who follow the collared caribou's journeys via maps sent to Manitoba Natural Resources, endorse the collaring, BQCMB member Albert Thorassie of Tadoule Lake told the board last fall.

But elders in the Athabascan communities of northern Saskatchewan aren't convinced collaring is right. "The elders, they respect the animals," said board member Jimmy Laban of Black Lake in a September 1994 Caribou News article. "They really don't want to have anything done to the herd."

The elders stand firm on that point even today. However, Pierre Robillard, an alternate member and Black Lake councillor who knows from experience it costs $3,000 to charter an aircraft just to find caribou, told the BQCMB at its February meeting in Whale Cove that he would support a collaring program if it could be constantly reviewed.

HOW COLLARS WORK

Satellite collars are made of machine belting. Collars that are adjusted for the best fit -- neither too tight or too loose -- can comfortably handle the body fat and the winter coat.

In the Northwest Territories, a helicopter and net-gun are used to capture caribou. In other places like northwestern Alaska, where the native population frowns on net-gunning, "we try not to use helicopters," explains Alaska Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist Jim Dau. Instead, they capture caribou as they cross the Kobuk River. (This also means there is no easy way to recapture the collared animals.)

In both cases, drugs are not used. The collar sends a signal to satellites in the sky that orbit the earth via the North and South poles. The satellites belong to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. As the world revolves beneath them, the satellites can scan -- and tune into -- every point on its surface.

Then the satellite signals are monitored in France by a data location system called Argos. The information goes to a processing centre that in turn sends data over phone lines to a computer (See diagram below).

PHYSICAL EFFECTS

What does a satellite collar do to the animal that wears it?

"The winter fur gets broken under the collar, down to a very densely packed stubble," says GNWT biologist Anne Gunn of the Department of Renewable Resources. As a rule, Gunn says the skin isn't broken by the collar, and she recalls just one instance when some skin was exposed from the hair. A small skin sample viewed under a microscope (this animal had been killed for the purposes of a study) showed that "the skin was slightly thickened," says Gunn, as it would be under a person's wedding band.

By contrast, Baffin regional biologist Michael Ferguson has found in extreme cases small patches of bare skin directly under the collar, "especially at the bottom of the throat where there's most rubbing and also at the top of the neck." That's because most of the collar's weight is at the top and it bears down on the animal, while body movement causes the collar to rub at the base of the throat.

James Schaefer of the wildlife division of Newfoundland's Department of Natural Resources, who has observed collared George River herd caribou since 1991, concludes "the effect (of collars on caribou), if any, is probably minimal." His counterpart, biologist Serge Couturier of Quebec's ministère de l'environnement et de la faune, concurs. "We never observe any major injury (or) minor skin injury to the animal by these collars."

APPEARANCES SEEM NORMAL

When middle-aged cows were collared in the Kitikmeot region of Nunavut, "we found that they had calves as expected," says Gunn, in the same proportion as the general population. The cows' relationship with their calves seemed normal too. "The calf suckled and played and generally behaved as a calf should." Mature cows are picked because they've already raised a few calves and have proven survival skills. Bulls and young animals are not used because of their changing neck size (bulls' necks get bigger during rutting season).

Trial and error has taught wildlife managers what best suits the caribou. Ferguson remembers in 1987, during the first year of a collaring project looking at movement and population definitions of caribou on southern Baffin Island, that the caribou were loosely collared. It proved to be the wrong choice, because "the collar was riding all the way up the neck" when the animal ran, and bruising would result.

The following year collars were more tightly cinched, still in a circular pattern. Then in 1989 came a breakthrough when, responding to hunters' concerns, Ferguson and his team, along with hunters and trappers of Baffin Island, measured the caribou's necks and developed a custom-made teardrop-shaped collar -- closer to the real shape of the caribou's neck.

Ferguson says the effects of satellite collars on caribou depends "on how well the collar is attached by the collaring crew," and on the fact that "some animals rub their collars a lot. Others don't."

STILL PART OF THE GANG?

"In terms of the other caribou accepting cows with collars," says Gunn, "it's a little hard to judge obviously," since wildlife managers see the collared animals infrequently. "But each spring we went and looked at them on the calving ground and there they were with all the others."

Ferguson is in cautious agreement, but "even though statistically things may appear to be absolutely normal, there's no way you can really tell." That's because unless an animal is rounded up for a collaring project, caribou aren't normally captured and handled twice. So the two groups can't be compared because they haven't been observed in the same way.

On the other hand, Gunn underlines that collaring leaves its mark in another way on caribou.

"I agree totally with the elders that collaring changes the animal . . . because the animal learns from the experience. I mean, caribou are not stupid," she says. "They learn, and they'll learn from experience, like being net-gunned. So in that way they're changed because they've learned something."

When asked if the collaring experience makes the caribou more cautious, Gunn replies, "I think when they hear a helicopter, yes. But it is possible to recapture them from the helicopter . . . just more difficult."

CREE WARY TOO

With the one-million strong George River and adjacent Leaf River herds, satellite and conventional radio collars work together like a tag team to give wildlife managers vital information used to follow herd migration, determine survival rates, even plan commercial harvests. Satellite collaring has become invaluable to the George River caribou, the largest migratory land herd, and is "now part of the basis of the management," believes Couturier. With a herd range straddling 725,000 square kilometres and a single animal covering 9,000 kilometres in a year, any means of more quickly tracking the caribou is a step toward greater efficiency.

When the satellite collaring project was introduced in 1991, "we receive also some concern by the Cree mainly," says Couturier, but never from the Inuit.

Both the Cree in the James Bay area and the Naskapi of northern Quebec reported seeing animals whose collars were too tightly attached, "but it was mainly because during the wintertime with the fur, the collar seems to disappear a bit because the fur's so long and so thick that this gives an appearance of too-tight collars," explains Couturier. "But it's not the case."

Since then, the Hunting, Fishing and Trapping Co-ordinating Committee (the George River co-management body that groups Cree, Naskipi, Inuit, and federal and Quebec government representatives) has heard a complaint by an individual hunter, but has not received "a formal Cree position about that," says Couturier. "And they seem to agree to let the program go on."

COLLARS PROVE TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE RIGHT

To the biologists that use them, satellite collars have become an essential caribou management tool -- one that's revealed much more of the caribou world.

"Satellite telemetry is a wonderful tool because all these assumptions about where caribou really go and what caribou really do woke up this biologist," confesses Ferguson.

"I listen to hunters more," he adds, because the information gleaned from satellite collaring proves traditional knowledge is correct, and sometimes provides information even hunters weren't aware of. "Satellite telemetry has not contradicted anything that any of the hunters ever told me. And it's actually proven beyond a shadow of a doubt some of the stuff about massive abandonment of winter range (near Cape Dorset) that was predicted by the elders in 1985."

Says Gunn, "We respect caribou, and we're working for their well-being. We go to a lot of trouble to make sure we don't harm them."

"And the satellite collars have given us information we would have got no other way."

HOW COLLARS WORK

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