Ahiak Caribou Herd

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The Ahiak caribou calve along the Queen Maud Gulf coast in Nunavut and spend the summers mostly in the Queen Maud Gulf Migratory Bird Sanctuary. The fall and spring migration leads them through and to the south of the Thelon Game Sanctuary extending their winter range into the NWT. In most years the herd winters on the barrens but satellite collars reveal that in some winters the herd has moved into the boreal forest in the area northwest of the Saskatchewan border to the north side of Great Slave Lake.

In the 1980s, biologists called the herd the Queen Maud Gulf herd, but adopted the herd’s proper Inuit name in the early 1990s. While satellite collaring indicates that the Ahiak caribou form a discrete herd during calving and the rut, their range overlaps with other caribou herds. Their traditional calving grounds overlap with the Bathurst herd’s traditional (but not current) calving grounds, their southern wintering ranges overlap with the ranges of the Beverly and Bathurst herds, and their northern winter ranges overlap with the Dolphin and Union herd’s mainland winter ranges.

Inuit elders from Gjoa Haven knew that caribou used to calve on the islands along the Queen Maud Gulf coast and early European explorers such as Hanbury, in 1901, described caribou migrating north toward the Queen Maud Gulf coast. In 1949, A. W. F. Banfield, who flew some of the first aerial surveys, included the Queen Maud Gulf hinterland within caribou summer distribution and commented on spring migration to the coast.

Scientific support that Ahiak caribou were a separate herd with distinct calving and rutting grounds has developed over the past twenty years. Supporting evidence came from several pre-calving surveys done in 1983 and 1995, calving ground surveys carried out in 1986 and 1996, and satellite telemetry studies carried out in 1996/1997 and 2001-2004.

Calving ground surveys estimated 11 265 caribou on the calving grounds in 1986 and 83 134 caribou on the calving grounds in 1996, which suggests there were as many as 200 000 caribou in the herd. The herd is seasonally hunted by people from Gjoa Haven, Umingmaktok, Cambridge Bay and Lutsel K’e in some winters.