Porcupine caribou return to the Dempster, after 5 years staying north

For the first time in five years, the bulk of the ​​​​porcupine caribou herd is migrating near the Dempster Highway.

"It's a sea of animals," says Stan McNevin, who has operated the Eagle Plains Hotel for more than 30 years. He says hunters are flocking to the area, and further north, to access the big herds.

"If you get north on the Yukon/N.W.T. border, the true tundra area, with relatively gentle mild hills, literally you can see tens of thousands of animals just at a glance. And as they're moving through, it's a whole region just on the move. It's amazing."

The porcupine caribou herd typically spends the spring on calving grounds near the Beaufort Sea, with large portions of the animals migrating south to winter on the flat ground along the Blackstone River, near Yukon's Tombstone Territorial Park.

For the past five years, the caribou had been staying north, near Arctic Village in Alaska. This year, the animals are starting to trickle south down the Dempster Highway, though the bulk remain further north, near the Yukon/N.W.T. border.

Peter Nagano was born in raised in Dawson City. A Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in member with subsistence hunting rights, he says sometimes he goes to Blackstone just to watch.

"Nowhere else in the world can you really see the caribou coming down, passing through or spending the winter, studying them, how they work."

He says it's something everyone should experience: "Take your time and just look at them."

Population on the rise

The porcupine caribou are one of the few Northern herds whose numbers have risen in recent years.

In 2010, scientists counted the herd and estimated 169,000 animals. The next accurate count, in 2013, found an estimated 197,000 animals.

Shaun Hughes, a district conservation officer out of Dawson City, says "it's hard to know" why the numbers went up, but he has one idea.

"They get hunted pretty heavily on the Dempster Highway," Hughes says. "Over the last four to five years, avoiding the highway is maybe a strategy for them."

Nagano says he hears people say it could be climate change, or summer fires, causing the migration to change.

Robert Alexie Sr., a Tetlit Gwich'in elder from Fort McPherson, N.W.T., says he doesn't know why the herd's migration has changed in recent years, but he does know that the animals are greatly missed.

"When there's no caribou it's no good," Alexie says. "No good for anyone."

Fort McPherson, on the banks of the Peel River near the Richardson Mountains, is one of the few hamlets on the highway, and one of several communities that rely on the herd for food and fur.

While no one can quite explain the changes, Alexie says that if the older timers like his dad were around today, they'd be able to say what's going on.