Malkolm Boothroyd is a writer, photographer and campaigns coordinator for the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society Yukon chapter.

About twenty caribou have blocked the road. I pull over to the shoulder and park. It’s a hot July day on the Top of the World Highway, about 90 kilometres northwest of Dawson City, Yukon. A light haze hangs in the air, smoke from wildfires burning across the border in Alaska. 

It’s the Fortymile caribou herd. Some caribou are lying on the gravel, others stand as three-week-old calves nuzzle around their legs. Velvet still coats the antlers of the bulls. Several hundred more caribou are scattered across the mountainsides ahead, and a few dozen are bedded among the stunted alders that furnish the rocky outcrops above the highway. 

It’s been slow going all afternoon. I’d only just gotten back on the road after waiting three hours for a hundred caribou to clear the highway a few kilometres back. I open the truck door and step out, trying to make as little noise as possible. I tiptoe around the back of the truck to where my companions, Chase Everitt and Chris Clarke, have parked. Chase is a fish and wildlife technician and a Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin citizen. Chris works with the First Nation’s Land Stewardship Project. 

The next moment I’m distracted by the roar of wheels churning through gravel. I look up in time to see a white SUV rounding a corner towards us. The vehicle speeds by without slowing down, quickly closing the gap to the caribou. Chris hammers the horn of her truck, and finally the SUV shudders to a halt and reverses back towards us. “There are laws about not harassing wildlife,” Chase tells the driver, a clean shaven guy with greying hair and Alberta plates. “You need to wait until the caribou move off the road.”

“Are you serious?” the man snaps.

He starts venting about public health measures adopted to control the coronavirus pandemic and then circles back to the caribou. He suggests he should be allowed to do what he wants.

“I’m sick of people telling me what I can’t do in my own country.”  

There are stories from a hundred years ago when Fortymile caribou were so numerous that it took days for the herd to cross the Yukon River. The paddlewheelers that plied the river between Whitehorse and Dawson would have to moor up and wait for the caribou to finish crossing. The herd has been through staggering crashes and spikes in the intervening time, from numbering in the hundreds of thousands, to just a few thousand in the 1970s. Concerted efforts to recover the population began in the 1990s. Wildlife authorities in Alaska began an expansive program of predator suppression, while Yukon hunters and the Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin stopped harvesting the herd. By 2017, the herd had rebounded to more than 80,000 caribou.

There’s something poetic about the Fortymile herd recovering to a point where it can once again stop traffic, but our Albertan friend doesn’t seem amused. He pulls a U-turn and speeds back towards Dawson, waving his middle finger at us as he disappears.

The Fortymile caribou are one of those animals that everything else seems to revolve around. Bears and wolves follow in the wake of the herd, and the footsteps of countless generations of caribou are etched into the mountainsides. Fortymile caribou sustained the Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin, and caribou meat helped to feed the tens of thousands of prospectors who flocked north during the Klondike Gold Rush. This excessive hunting by newcomers drove the herd to crisis, and displaced the First Nation’s harvest. The Fortymile caribou may have faded away for a time, but its recovery is bringing new optimism, as well as new fears.

I’d come here hoping to get photos and videos of caribou to use in the advocacy work I do with the Yukon chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. The Yukon is in the middle of land use planning for the Dawson region, which will determine which parts of the herd’s range will be protected, and how much development can happen in the rest. This is a critical time for the Fortymile caribou. Some biologists worry that food shortages within the herd’s range could trigger another population crash. Meanwhile, new mining developments could encroach upon the herd’s remaining range. The next few years will shape the future of the herd for decades to come.

The memory of the Fortymile caribou still lingers on the landscapes they once inhabited. Ancient caribou trails line mountains in the Dawson Range, even though the herd has not been seen in these lands for more than 60 years. The herd once ranged throughout the central Yukon and Alaska, some winters migrating almost as far south as Whitehorse. One traveller described canoeing down the White River in 1909, where “for forty miles we were running through one continuous mass of caribou. The narrow valley and high bald mountains on either side, swarmed with the animals.” In the 1920s, the herd probably numbered around 250,000, according to Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game.

Profligate hunting of the Fortymile caribou began at the turn of the 20th century and accelerated through the 1930s as new roads opened the highlands to hunters. Historical accounts from game officers in Alaska described people firing into herds — leaving some caribou crippled, and others dead with their meat left to waste. In a single season, 10,000 caribou were killed by hunters in one game district in Alaska. One warden wrote that “most people are content to believe that the animals are in countless numbers that cannot be exhausted.” By the 1930s, the herd was in serious decline. Wolves and wildfires likely worsened the herd’s freefall, and by 1940 fewer than 20,000 remained. The herd had recovered somewhat by 1960, only to plummet again. By 1975, there were only around 5,000 left, according to the Yukon government. The once expansive range of the Fortymile caribou contracted to its very core, in the hills between Dawson City and Fairbanks. 

Thanks to decades of recovery work, there are more than 10 times as many caribou in the Fortymile herd as there were in the 1970s. Still, there hasn’t been a corresponding increase in the herd’s range. It’s hard to say why. The networks of mines that extend south from Dawson City might deter caribou from crossing these habitats, but there are other explanations too. Trees and shrubs are flourishing at ever higher elevations as climate change heats up the north. That means the alpine migration corridors, those places above treeline that once unlocked the central Yukon, may now be too overgrown for caribou to use. It’s also possible that the Fortymile herd has lost its collective memory of its old range and the pathways leading there. Migrations have to be learned, and this knowledge could have died out decades and decades ago with the last of the caribou that ventured into central Yukon.

The herd’s failure to reestablish its old range means that caribou are packed tightly within its core range. Some biologists suspect that the herd has surpassed the carrying capacity of the ecosystems it inhabits — essentially that there aren’t enough grasses, sedges and lichens to sustain 80,000 caribou. Insufficient food makes it less likely for cows to give birth, and more difficult for the calves that are born to survive. There are fears another population crash could be looming. This has led wildlife managers in Alaska to push for more hunting to bring the herd’s population down. The Yukon government and the Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin First Nation recently agreed on a new management plan, which includes a small hunt for non-First Nations hunters. It’s a new era for the Fortymile caribou.

The hills surrounding Dawson City trend steadily higher as you go west towards Alaska, and slowly the hilltops begin to shrug off the cloak of the boreal forest. These tundra ridges are the heart of the herd’s summer habitat. In the windswept highlands there’s relief from mosquitoes, and lichens and grasses to feed on. Fortymile caribou give birth to their calves across the border in Alaska, then in late June and early July huge congregations of caribou move into the Yukon, following the ridgelines to skirt the tangles of spruce and alder that fill the valleys.

Many of these ridges are also lined with mining roads, winding away towards placer mines in the valleys and hardrock exploration properties in the alpine. Over a quarter of the herd’s core range is blanketed by quartz mining claims. Study after study — from Alaska and the Yukon, to Alberta and the Northwest Territories — warn of the impacts to caribou from industrial development. Developments like roads, mines and oil and gas infrastructure displace caribou from ecosystems, interrupt migrations, and make it easier for predators like wolves to prey on caribou. 

Big decisions are looming about which parts of the Fortymile caribou herd’s range will be conserved, and which areas will stay open to mining. In the Yukon, decisions like these are made through the territory’s land use planning process, born from the Umbrella Final Agreement between Yukon First Nations and the Crown. In June the Dawson Land Use Planning Commission released the first draft of its plan. The plan divides the Dawson region into 23 different landscape management units, each with its own land use designation. Forty-five per cent of the region has some form of conservation designation, and the rest is open to varying levels of development. 

The plan recommends strong protections for the very core of the herd’s range within the Matson Uplands, a mountain range along the Alaska border, west of Dawson City. But the remainder of the herd’s key range is at risk. Most of the herd’s remaining critical summer range falls within the ‘Fortymile Caribou Corridor’ landscape management unit. This area is divided by elevation, with high elevations open to limited development and low elevations open to moderate development. In alpine habitats, the industrial footprint cannot exceed one quarter of one percent of the landscape. This threshold is relatively low, but it’s calculated by averaging disturbances across the 800 square kilometres of alpine within the unit. High amounts of disturbance could still occur within small areas. Any mining development within ridgetop habitats could interrupt caribou migration corridors, or displace them from key summer habitats.

With a few modifications, the Dawson Land Use Plan could provide strong protections for the Fortymile caribou. It’s critical to keep alpine ridges free from new industrial development, and the plan should designate these habitats as conservation areas. The plan should also ensure there’s ample wintering habitat for Fortymile caribou. Caribou disperse across lower elevations in the winter, and developments within core wintering habitats should remain within levels caribou can tolerate.

The word restore comes up a lot in conversations about the Fortymile caribou herd. There’s restoring the herd to a robust population, and the herd restoring parts of its old range, but it’s equally important to restore people’s connections to the herd.

A few Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin citizens began hunting the herd again in the 2000s, but rebuilding relationships with the herd has been slow. There were generations of Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin who barely hunted the herd. Young people like Chase Everitt are changing that. “I just like seeing animals,” he says. “Even after the shot, it’s not the excitement of ‘I got one’ it’s ‘I get to see it more, see what it actually looks like, everything about it.’ ”

Chase describes his first time hunting the Fortymile caribou. He shot one caribou from a group of four, then the sound of the rifle echoing off the hills set the landscape into motion. Thousands of caribou stirred across the mountains ahead of him. The image sounds a lot like accounts I’d read from a century ago, when people spoke of mountainsides so thick with caribou that the landscape itself seemed alive.

Chris and Chase head back for Dawson. I drive another kilometre up the road, then pack a bag with camera gear and start bushwhacking. I head for the top of a hill, not far from where I’d seen caribou congregating earlier in the day. After a few minutes I break free from a tangle of alders into the clear. Soon a hundred caribou appear just ahead along the ridge. I duck down among a clump of spruce and wait. The caribou burst into a canter and jostle towards me. The herd passes within 30 metres of me. The air is heavy with the sounds of grunting and clicking tendons. Then they’re gone.

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Malkolm Boothroyd is a writer, photographer and campaigns coordinator for the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society Yukon chapter.

Two years ago I sat in a windowless convention hall in Anchorage, Alaska, breathing stale air, waiting my turn to speak about the most vibrant place I’d ever visited, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. High-ranking officials from the U.S. Department of Interior sat at the front of the room, emotionless as speaker after speaker described the importance of the Arctic refuge — for caribou, birds, polar bears, and Indigenous communities across the North that depend on the Porcupine caribou herd.

The Interior Department had just begun its environmental review of oil and gas leasing on the Coastal Plain of the Arctic refuge. But even back then, the outcome seemed to have already been determined. The people in charge of the environmental review were closely tied to the oil industry, and the President of the United States had repeatedly claimed opening the Arctic refuge to drilling as one of his proudest accomplishments. All signs pointed towards a rushed and cursory review.

Pacific loons are among the many waterfowl that migrate to the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Photo: Malkolm Boothroyd / malkolmboothroyd.com

Last week the Interior Department released its Record of Decision, bringing its environmental review to a close. To nobody’s surprise, the department gave the go-ahead to the most aggressive scenario imaginable: one that would offer up the entire Coastal Plain to oil companies, and place the fewest restrictions on drilling. This week, we responded. Thirteen groups, CPAWS Yukon included, are taking the Department of Interior to court. The lawsuit is led by the Gwich’in Steering Committee, and will be argued by lawyers from Trustees for Alaska, a public interest environmental law group. Earthjustice and the Natural Resources Defence Council have filed a second lawsuit.

Our lawsuit challenges the legality of Interior’s environmental review. For example, the environmental review gave little heed to the seven original purposes of the Arctic refuge, like protecting wildlife, wilderness and subsistence. Instead it shaped its environmental review to accommodate an oil and gas leasing program, an eighth purpose that was only added in 2017 when the U.S. Congress opened the refuge to drilling. We allege that the Department of Interior broke the law by disregarding the refuge’s original purposes and failing to safeguard those purposes through the design of its oil and gas leasing program.

A calf from the Porcupine caribou herd that migrates between Alaska, northern Yukon and Northwest Territories, and is harvested by Gwich’in communities there. Photo: Malkolm Boothroyd / malkolmboothroyd.com

The U.S. government recently confirmed its decision to open the Porcupine caribou herd’s calving grounds, in Alaska’s Coastal Plain, to oil and gas development. Photo: Malkolm Boothroyd / malkolmboothroyd.com

The Porcupine caribou herd is one of few healthy herds remaining in Canada. Photo: Atsushi Sugimoto / Arctic Photo Laboratory

We also contend that the Department of Interior broke the law by not adequately considering alternatives, failing to take a hard look at the consequences of drilling and not adequately addressing the threats to Gwich’in subsistence rights. In total, our lawsuit makes eight claims against the Department of Interior for transgressions in its environmental review and associated actions to authorize leasing in the Arctic refuge. If we prevail, we hope the courts will invalidate the Department of Interior’s environmental review, and any decisions that stem from it.

The Department of Interior could have modelled its environmental review after the Berger Commission. It could have taken the time to visit every Gwich’in community, and learn why oil and gas development in the Arctic refuge poses such a grave threat to the Gwich’in way of life. The Department of Interior could have listened to scientists and the public. It could have written an environmental impact statement that acknowledged the magnitude of damage that drilling would bring. But that didn’t suit the U.S. government’s agenda — since a review in good faith would have found that the dangers of drilling far, far outweighed the pros. Instead, the Department of Interior started with a conclusion in mind, and then wrote an environmental review to justify it.

Caribou is prepared for a community feast in Old Crow, Yukon. Photo: Atsushi Sugimoto / Arctic Photo Laboratory

The coming months will be pivotal for the Arctic refuge — with lawsuits, a potential lease sale and the U.S. election all looming. At the same time we’re working on a parallel strategy, pressuring Canadian banks to rule out financing for Arctic refuge drilling. Our allies in the United States are pressuring corporations there to do the same, and five of the six largest U.S. banks have agreed.

Autumn is spreading across the Arctic, and most of the caribou have departed from the Coastal Plain. I hope that by the time the caribou return next spring, the future of the Arctic refuge will be much more secure than it is today.

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I hear the wind before it hits me, a dull roar slamming the north face of Mount Cameron. The wind wraps around the ridge, hissing between the slabs of lichen-covered rocks, and biting through my hiking clothes.

Even though it’s only the middle of August, I feel the impending winter in the wind, and see it in the yellow-leaved poplar trees far below in the valley.

The full force of the gust greets me as I crest the ridgeline and step onto the peak of Mount Cameron. I dig in my pack for an energy bar and extra layers of clothes then hunker down a rock. Then I pull out my phone and open up Facebook.

Checking the internet out here feels bizarre.

It’s one more reminder that the Yukon, the place I grew up, is changing. I associate mountaintop cell coverage with Banff and Whistler, not the wilds of the Yukon, 400 kilometres north of Whitehorse.

I feel like I’m straddling two Yukons.

Cell reception in the last place you’d expect it: in the rugged mountains of north-central Yukon. Photo: Malkolm Boothroyd

South and west of me are cell towers, highways and airstrips. Roads and mines carve up boreal forest valleys and tundra plateaus. To the north and my east, the land is still remote and free of roads. Before me stretches the Beaver River Watershed, and beyond it the Peel Watershed.

These two Yukons aren’t static — one grows while the other shrinks. The Beaver Watershed teeters on the edge, one of many parts of the Yukon that could be transformed by a new wave of development.

Resource roads service mining companies, not communities

Vancouver-based ATAC Resources Ltd. wants to cut a 65-kilometre resource road through the valley below me. The company holds claims to a series of gold and copper deposits east and west of the Beaver River.

Road access would slash the cost of exploration at these properties and make mining development more economical. The ATAC road could also bring serious ecological impacts to the watershed.

Roads are a driving force behind habitat fragmentation, the spread of invasive species and the disruption of water flows. Numerous animals avoid areas near roads, or change their migration patterns in response to roads.

Weathered wooden posts mark a mineral claim near Rambler Creek. The Yukon’s free entry mining system is a relic of the Klondike Gold Rush, and in much of the Yukon people can still claim mineral rights by pounding a post into the ground. Photo: Malkolm Boothroyd

Roads bring both costs and benefits. Many people who call the Yukon home first arrived here on a road trip up the Alaska Highway, and roads help people access beloved lakes, rivers and mountain ranges. At the same time many Yukoners value the remoteness of places like the Peel Watershed, far removed from the rumble of truck engines.

There’s one key difference between the ATAC road and other highways in the Yukon — resource roads service mining companies, not communities.

‘Additional industrial development will follow’

I pull my camera from my pack and snap a few images of the valley. Citizens of the Na-cho Nyak Dun First Nation have close ties to the Beaver River Watershed, however the area is unknown to many in the wider territory.

Collecting photos and stories from this area is a priority for the Yukon chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, the environmental non-profit where I work. My friend Maury and I are here to capture photos of these mountains.

In 2017 the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board (YESAB) ruled in favour of the ATAC road, but the board’s review left many questions unanswered.

ATAC’s belt of mineral claims extends more than 100 kilometres beyond the end of the proposed road. The company could be tempted to extend the road in the future, while other mining companies will likely look to build offshoot roads. In comments submitted to the board, the Yukon government acknowledged that “opening up a new all-season access route into the Beaver River watershed results in a high likelihood that additional industrial development will follow.”

Roads scar a hillside near Dawson City, Yukon. Photo: Malkolm Boothroyd

The board did not consider the avalanche of development the ATAC road could trigger. Its mandate is to evaluate the specifics of each project as it arises, but this provides few safeguards against incremental environmental impacts.

The Yukon government and Na-cho Nyak Dun First Nation are working on a land use plan for the Beaver River Watershed, though the plan is proceeding on the assumption that the ATAC road will be built.

The Beaver Watershed saga is part of a larger road-building dilemma that is playing out across the Yukon. The Yukon has a relatively small road network, but that’s changing.

In 2017 the federal government, territorial government and the mining industry pledged nearly $470 million to the Yukon Resource Gateway Project — aiming to improve access to mineral hotspots in the Yukon by building or upgrading 650 kilometres of roads.

Map: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

The Yukon Resource Gateway Project would fund construction in the Dawson Range of west-central Yukon, and the Nahanni Range along the territory’s eastern boundary. The roads would service major mining proposals such as GoldCorp’s Coffee Mine and Western Copper & Gold’s Casino Mine. The latter plans to store tailings behind what would be the highest dam on earth — nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower.

Beyond servicing these megaprojects, roads in remote areas like the Dawson Range could bring a flurry of new mineral exploration and extraction. In a letter of support for the Resource Gateway Project, the Yukon Chamber of Mines writes that the project would “lead to a significant increase in activity in this highly prospective district.”

Mining activity a threat to caribou herds

Road construction and a corresponding spike in mining activity in the Dawson Range could have serious consequences for the Klaza herd: a type of morthern mountain caribou, listed as special concern under Canada’s Species at Risk Act.

According to Environment Yukon, the Klaza caribou herd faces “some of the most significant conservation concerns among all northern mountain caribou herds in Yukon,” owing in large part to roads and mining activity.

Klaza caribou spend summers in the alpine, and descend to lower elevations in winter. The herd has largely abandoned portions of its winter range where mining, roads and other human activities are concentrated.

Further road construction and development of the Casino Mine and others could force caribou out from high-value winter habitats in the northern part of their range. Increased road and mine development in the Dawson Range could also hinder the recovering Fortymile caribou herd from reestablishing its historical summer range.

Major road construction projects could usher in landscape-level changes to areas like the Dawson Range. The Yukon’s environmental review process is poorly equipped to address the cumulative impacts and domino effects that such projects could bring.

Wind ruffles the neck feathers of a young spruce grouse near Rambler Hill, above McQuesten Lake. Photo: Malkolm Boothroyd

Which version of the Yukon do we want to live in?

According to the Yukon’s application for federal infrastructure funding (submitted under the previous government), the Resource Gateway Project would undergo environmental review as individual road components, not the program as a whole.

The application also notes that road components could be assessed by district offices — the lowest level of review permitted under the territory’s environmental assessment act. District office reviews take an average of 63 business days to conclude, while the impacts brought on by road developments could last for generations. The ATAC road was reviewed by a district office.

One by one, projects are being approved that are transforming the Yukon. This approach to environmental assessments makes it difficult to take a broad view of this development path — and ponder which version of the Yukon we want to live in.

Decisions with long-term implications for the territory should be made through the Yukon’s land use planning process. Land use planning was established under the Umbrella Final Agreement between the Crown and Yukon First Nations, and is designed to make collaborative decisions about future land uses, conservation and developments.

Projects like the Resource Gateway are unlikely to be evaluated as part of the territory’s land use planning process, due to how slowly planning has unfolded.

In the 26 years since the Umbrella Final Agreement was signed, only two land use plans have been finalized.

In contrast, the clock is ticking on the Resource Gateway Project: federal funding expires in 2022.

Water tumbles through an iron-stained creek, one of the countless tributaries of the Beaver River. Photo: Malkolm Boothroyd

Developments like the Resource Gateway could amount to de-facto land use planning: irreversibly changing the Yukon while circumventing the land use planning process.

More projects like the Resource Gateway and the ATAC road are sure to come.

Many Yukon government reports over the decades have envisioned new transportation corridors to stimulate mining development and link the Yukon to markets across the world. Meanwhile, the mining industry continually pushes for more infrastructure dollars. Well-reasoned, collaborative decision making — ideally through land use planning, is critical to arriving at the right resolutions over road developments.

A bull moose wades through a small lake in the subalpine meadow. The nearby creek is one of the 73 water bodies the ATAC Road would cross. Photo: Malkolm Boothroyd

The ridge where I’m standing is far out of earshot from the nearest truck, but the wind is loud enough. The gale continues relentlessly through the night. It’s still blowing the next morning, as my friend Maury and I hike through high alpine meadows. We trace the path of an iron-stained creek, one of the 73 creeks or rivers that the ATAC road would cross.

The willows thicken as we descend, and the sporadic spruce trees begin to form a forest. Maury finds a moose trail and we follow it through the trees, awkwardly clambering over fallen logs that a moose would trot over. There are fresh hoof-prints where the ground is soft.

There’s something special about navigating a landscape on trails worn only by the footsteps of grizzly bears and moose.

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“Caribou!” somebody shouts. 

Dozens of people spring from their seats and hurry for the doors of Old Crow’s community hall, sweeping me along. The caribou stew I’d just ladled into my bowl sloshes dangerously around as I stumble out into the sunlight. The Porcupine River is swollen with snowmelt from the Richardson and Nahoni mountains. Chunks of ice wash downstream. Fifteen caribou struggle against the current, the ripples in their wake catching the sun. 

Onlookers watch as caribou swim across the Porcupine River outside Old Crow, Yukon. Photo: Malkolm Boothroyd

After five minutes of swimming they reach the far bank. The caribou scramble out from the river and vanish into the spindly spruce trees. People are beaming. The caribou have finally returned.

Visits to Old Crow, Yukon, are the best part of my job campaigning against oil drilling in the calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd with the Yukon chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. I’d come to the Gwich’in community in the Yukon’s northern corner for “Caribou Days.” Locals and visitors compete to fry the best bannock, skin a caribou leg the fastest or toss the most rings onto a set of antlers. In the evenings we feast on fresh caribou then jig and waltz to fiddle music. 

A caribou leg-skinning contest is one of the many community competitions held during Caribou Days in Old Crow, Yukon. Photo: Malkolm Boothroyd

Caribou Days is meant to celebrate the return of the herd, as caribou flood north toward their calving grounds in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Except lately, caribou have been hard to come by. People here have been starving for caribou meat.

Last spring was a poor time for caribou around Old Crow and during recent autumn migrations the herd hasn’t lingered around the community. Caribou are critical to the culture and subsistence way of life of the Vuntut Gwitchin and essential to food security in Old Crow, where a bag of apples can cost $17 and two litres of milk costs $9.99.

Nobody is certain why the caribou have been sparse of late. I’ve heard people suggest low-flying cargo planes are disturbing caribou, while others wonder if changes in the climate and increasing shrub growth could be factors. The scarcity of caribou around Old Crow is a paradox, because the herd is at a record high. However, the recent meat shortages the Vuntut Gwitchin have experienced foreshadow what could happen should the health of the Porcupine caribou herd take a turn for the worse, like many other caribou herds across the North.

Competitors attempt to toss rings onto a set of caribou antlers at Caribou Days in Old Crow, Yukon. Photo: Malkolm Boothroyd

Caribou decorate a post outside Old Crow’s community centre, Yukon. Photo: Malkolm Boothroyd

In 2017, the U.S. government opened the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge — the heart of the herd’s calving grounds — to oil drilling. Now the administration is fast-tracking an environmental review that would auction away the birthplace of the herd to the fossil fuel industry. 

For decades the Gwich’in have led the movement to protect the calving grounds — efforts that have ramped up since 2017. Lorraine Netro, Norma Kassi, Chief Dana Tizya-Tramm and countless other Gwich’in advocates have made journey after gruelling journey to Washington, D.C., to call for protecting the Arctic Refuge. In March, Chief Tizya-Tramm testified before the U.S. House of Representatives, telling lawmakers “development on the coastal plain amounts to the cultural genocide of the entire Gwich’in Nation.”

It’s in large part thanks to the work of the Gwich’in that the Arctic Refuge stayed off-limits to oil and gas for as long as it did. Once again, the Gwich’in and environmental groups are working to keep drilling out of the refuge by scrutinizing the U.S. Government’s environmental review process, building support for wilderness legislation on Capitol Hill and campaigning for banks to withhold financing for drilling.

The Porcupine caribou herd is one of the last large, healthy, migratory caribou herds on the planet. Farther east in the Arctic, the Bathurst and Baffin herds have declined 96 per cent and 98 per cent over the past 30 years. Collectively the two herds have lost close to 700,000 caribou. 

The Fortymile caribou of the central Yukon and Alaska are a shadow of their former selves — once so plentiful the herd could take ten days to cross the Yukon River, bringing the steamships that plied back and forth to the Klondike goldfields to a halt. The fate of many caribou herds is reflected in the alarming loss of biodiversity around the planet. That makes the Porcupine caribou herd’s vitality all the more incredible, and protecting the herd even more critical.

The late-evening sun, still high above the horizon, gleams through one of the windows in the community centre and casts a square of dazzling light in the centre of the hall. Lorraine Netro lays out caribou antlers, a hide and spruce boughs on the hardwood floor. Many of the people filtering in are dressed in vests and mocassins made from caribou or moose hide and decorated with hand-beaded flowers. There’s a fashion show tonight, then a talent show and another dance. 

A community waltz is part of the Caribou Days celebrations in Old Crow, Yukon. Photo: Malkolm Boothroyd

The return of the caribou have lit up the weekend’s festivities and are a reminder of why the Porcupine caribou herd is so important to life in Old Crow. Still, it’s hard to forget the danger that lies ahead. Keeping oil drilling out of the Arctic Refuge calls for monumental efforts from the Gwich’in, and groups like ours that support them in this campaign. Securing permanent protection for the calving grounds could take years, maybe even decades. That’s a long time. But for tonight, it is time for more jigging and fiddle music.

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