Local Caribou Availability
A Draft Report from Community Involvement Phase 2 of the NSF Community Sustainability Project
prepared by
Gary Kofinas, Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks (gary.kofinas@dartmouth.edu)
Stephen Braund, Stephen R. Braund and Associates (srba@alaska.net)
December, 1998
Please do not quote or cite this document without the express permission of the authors.
Note: entire report is available here as a portable document file (pdf - 355K).
Objective of the Report
The purpose of this document is to report findings of the NSF Arctic Community Sustainability Project’s research on community caribou availability to university-based investigators for development of the project's SYNTHESIS MODEL. Field work for the project was completed in Old Crow, Fort McPherson, Aklavik, and Arctic Village from April 1997 to April 1998 by Gary Kofinas (all communities) and Stephen R. Braund and Associates (Aklavik and Arctic Village) in collaboration with local research associates. Community research associates working with the project were Joe Tetlichi (Old Crow), Billy Archie (Aklavik), Johnny Charlie, Sr. (Fort McPherson) and Sara James (Arctic Village). Findings are also informed by field work and data conducted in the MAB Sponsored Porcupine Caribou Herd (PCH) co-management research from 1993 to 1996 (Kofinas, 1998).
The report provides a brief literature review on caribou movements and distribution patterns of the Porcupine caribou herd, local knowledge propositions about caribou movements and hunting patterns, mapped range-wide zones, and values for use in the modeling effort.
The overall objective of the Sustainability Project is to improve the ability of researchers and community members to understand the implications of possible futures (i.e. climate change, ANWR 1002 oil development, and changing levels of tourism and non-local hunting) on the most important elements of life in small Arctic communities. The findings presented in this report are focused one part of that study -- the conditions affecting community caribou availability. Our work focused on the following questions:
- What are the conditions that make caribou available and unavailable
to communities?
- Conditions affecting the distribution and movements of caribou,
- Conditions affecting hunter access to caribou.
- How does participation in the wage economy affect locals' caribou hunting?
- How does having access to cash affect caribou hunting?
- What are some of the factors that affect exchange of caribou between households and communities?
- In what conditions do locals move away from and or move back to communities?
This report is not intended to be free-standing nor exhaustive. Rather it is produced to complement the work of NSF researchers and augment their analysis of their existing data sets and construction of models. In this respect, the material documented is used to inform our study of possible futures by:
- generating variables to be considered or included in models
- dimensionalizing variables or establishing parameter values
- supplying a more holistic and complete understanding of key causal relationships incorporated in project models.
Before presenting the findings of this work, we want to articulate a proviso about cultural difference in research science and local knowledge. We want to acknowledge that by using computer simulation models as a means of understanding community sustainability, this study approaches the question of community sustainability in a manner that is foreign to the local culture of our partner communities.
While researchers commonly focus on specific quantitative relationships, community members frame their understanding in ways that are more holistic and less mechanistic that those portrayed in computer models. As locals have told us (also see Kofinas (ibid: Chapter 4.), Porcupine Caribou people’s understanding of their ecosystem blurs the distinctions between the mystical and the material, generally locates relationships as bound to a historical context, and communicates understanding through the oral narratives of individuals.
Albeit different, we also assume that the local knowledge of caribou people shares similarities to what is commonly termed "the western scientific tradition" (Scott, 1996), and can make a meaningful contribution to the synthesis modeling effort of the project. We strive towards the co-production of knowledge with communities to reflect the problem of uncertainty in a comprehensive manner. Following Feit’s (1988) idea of "dual systems of knowledge," we incorporate local knowledge into our study not to meld cultural perspectives, but in an attempt to improve communication among parties and resolve common problems.
In the pages below we present details about the hunting patterns of communities and providing time/distance information that serves in the basis of rules and reference tables of our SYNTHESIS MODEL. Since the work of the project has focused primarily on developing a SYNTHESIS MODEL that reflects Old Crow’s conditions, Old Crow field work is featured in this report. The report also presents a brief literature review and local knowledge on PCH movements and distribution, range-wide and community hunting zones and the input values derived from our work used in the SYNTHESIS MODEL.
