Volume 4, 1951 - The Arctic Circle - Home

will it be possible to determine what number of animaIs may
be killed annually by hunters, without endangering the main
stock.
Barren ground caribou were once plentiful in Ungava
and Labrador but during the last fifty years they have aUlost
completely vanished and only in recent years have there been
reports of slight increases in the Fort Chimo area (Wright,
1944; ~anning, 1948); in Baffin Island caribou have been
decreasing during the last few decades at such an alarming
rate that total protection has lately been considered
necessary. Labrador-Ungava and Baffin Island physiographically
are very different from the vast continental area west of
Hudson Bay but in many respects are comparable with the icefree
parts of Greenland.
Several causes have been advanced to explain the rapid
disappearance of the barren land caribou in Labrador-Ungava
but thus far no very satisfactory explanation has been given.
ln Baffin Island, however, it is thought that excessive
hunting is the primary cause of depletion (Wright, 1944).
Practically no statistical information is available for either
area and it is not possible, therefore, even to estimate past
or present populations of the numbers killed by hunting. ln
Greenland, on the other hand, caribou have been rather closely
observed for more than two hundred years by Danish scientists
and administrators, and it may be of interest to note briefly
what has happened there. ln comparing the two areas it should
be noted that in Greenland the caribou is more vulnerable to
hunting because the ice-free parts of Greenland are deeply
indented by fjords which in many parts extend to the very
edge of the great inland ice which covers all the interior
of that island. These fjords not only make the areas inhabited
by caribou accessible to Eskimo hunters summer and
winter, but they also impede north and south migration of the
caribou. Furthermore, there are places along the Greenland
coasts where huge glaciers, in sorne cases more than 50 miles
in width, form impassable barriers to coast-wise migration.
The Greenland caribou, on the other hand, does not
suffer from the predation of warble or nostril flies because
those pests apparently never reached Greenland. On the west
coast, too, there are no wolves. Another factor which undoubtedly
has been of inestimable conservational value is
that even to this day ail hunting in Greenland is done with
single-shot rifles. No loaded shells are sold to Greenlanders
who can buy only black powder for reloading. While the use
of single-shot, black powder rifles and shotguns may at first
appearance seem anachronistic, the practice nevertheless is