Working Groups/Committees

Walrus Working Group
Narwhal Working Group
Southeast Baffin Beluga Management Committee
The Beverly and Qamanirjuaq Caribou Management Board
Big Game Guides Working Group

This group, formed in 1999, is developing a walrus management plan for Nunavut. The increased interest in walrus sport hunting has meant that we need to find a means to integrate the sport hunts into the current walrus harvest to ensure that sports hunting does not increase the overall walrus harvest. The management plan will do this. This working group's members have been studying traditional and scientific knowledge about walrus, looking at problems with the current management system, and suggesting ways to better manage walrus. The group aims to complete a new walrus management plan by 2001 or 2002.

In the past, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans placed quotas on the number of narwhal hunted. Through a new narwhal management system developed by the Narwhal Working Group, the federal quotas have been lifted in three communities – Qikiqtarjuaq, Pond Inlet and Repulse Bay – for a trial period of three years.

The communities, in turn, must adopt their own narwhal hunting rules, and institute a reporting system to help DFO and the NWMB monitor the number of narwhals struck and landed, wounded and escaped and struck and lost each season. The HTO's rules control hunting of their members specifying details such as hunting methods and safety requirements.

The Narwhal Working Group, formed in 1998, may continue to meet once yearly to review the way the new management system is being carried out, or the NWMB and DFO may meet directly with the communities.

In another new management system, the NWMB has also lifted quotas on beluga in two communities, Iqaluit and Kimmirut. Previously, biologists believed that beluga hunted from three southeast Baffin Island communities (Iqaluit, Pangnirtung and Kimmirut) were from the same "stock". Through research and Inuit knowledge, it has been shown that each community actually harvests from a separate stock. As with the new narwhal management system, this community-based management of beluga also requires that the community's HTO develop hunting rules for its members. Since it came together in 1996, the Southeast Baffin Beluga Management Committee has recommended research needs on beluga and suggested management measures. The NWMB is currently studying whether to continue the Committee or to work directly with the communities to implement the new system.

The Beverly and Qamanirjuaq Caribou Management Board (BQCMB) acts as a sub-committee of the NWMB. The BQCMB is comprised of representatives of government and aboriginal groups in Nunavut, NWT, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. They provide recommendations to the NWMB regarding management of the Beverly and Qamanirjuaq caribou herds, herds that are shared by the four jurisdictions.

The Nunavut Land Claims Agreement (NLCA) gives the NWMB the authority to set minimum qualifications for big game hunting guides. To carry out that task, the Big Game Guides Working Group was set up in 1999. The Working Group met in April, 2000 and developed an initial set of qualifications. The Working Group will meet again in 2001 and make its recommendations to the NWMB.

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