The State of Circumpolar Walrus Populations

21
Miller et al. 2006). Data are not available to test whether these changes in walrus life-history
parameters might have been mediated by changes in abundance versus environmental changes
that affected carrying capacity (Allen and Angliss 2015).
Available evidence suggests that commercial and subsistence harvests prior to the 1960s limited
the population, and adoption of harvest quotas in the 1960s resulted in a population increase
until the carrying capacity (ca. 300,000, Fay et al. 1997) was reached in the 1970/1980s and
productivity began to decline (USFWS 2014). The lack of US harvest quotas starting in 1979 and
reduced productivity levels resulted in another population decline, and the population is once
again likely limited mainly by subsistence harvests (USFWS 2014), although other factors such as
haulout mortalities may also be important (Udevitz et al. 2013). Changing sea ice dynamics may
also result in further population declines in the future (Garlich-Miller et al. 2011).
MANAGEMENT REGULATIONS
Human activities that affect Atlantic walruses are managed within their respective jurisdictions
by Canada, Greenland, Norway, and Russia: those affecting Pacific walruses are managed by
Russia and the United States. The management practices of these countries are summarized
briefly in this section and in Table 4. Aboriginal peoples in Canada, coastal-dwelling Alaskan
Natives in the United States, and indigenous people inhabiting Chukotka (Russia) are permitted
to hunt walruses for subsistence purposes (Shadbolt et al. 2014). Additional information is
available in recent management reviews for the Atlantic walrus (Wiig et al. 2014), the Pacific
walrus (Garlich-Miller et al. 2011), and for both subspecies (Shadbolt et al. 2014).
A challenge with respect to managing walrus hunting remains the variable and sometimes high
rates of hunting losses (animals injured or killed but not secured) (D.B. Stewart et al. 2014a; Wiig
et al. 2014). Because walruses occur in remote locations, often under inhospitable conditions,
regulatory enforcement is also a challenge.
Canada
Hunt management
Commercial whalers and land-based traders took many walruses from the CCA-WG and CHA-
NWG populations between ca. 1820 and 1928 (D.B. Stewart et al. 2014a). The large removals
caused A.P. Low (1906 p.281ff) commander of the Canadian Government scientific expedition to
study fisheries and geology in northern Hudson Bay and the Arctic Islands in 1903–1904, to press