Environment Yukon is closing the caribou hunt along the Dempster Highway in the home range of the Hart River caribou herd, the department announced this morning.

The closure comes because there are few, if any, Porcupine caribou in the area.

Without Porcupine caribou around, it’s likely any caribou shot would be Hart River caribou who number a susceptible 2,200, the closure notice points out.

The notice says that beginning Wednesday, the emergency conservation closure will apply in game management subzones 2-16, 2-23, 2-27, 2-28, and 2-39, from kilometre 77 of the Dempster Highway to km 195.

When high numbers of Porcupine caribou are in the area, hunting remains open because it’s likely a caribou that is shot would be a Porcupine caribou, whose numbers were tallied last year at a robust 197,000, the notice indicates.

It says: “The Hart River herd is small compared to the Porcupine caribou herd and cannot sustain the same level of hunting.”

Environment Yukon biologist Mike Suitor said this morning that satellite radio collars and aerial survey work show that most if not all of the Porcupine herd is staying put on its wintering grounds near Arctic Village, Alaska.

In fact, said Suitor, this is the fifth consecutive year that there has not been significant numbers of Porcupine caribou along the southern part of the Dempster Highway.

“Certainly since we started monitoring the caribou in the ’70s, this is the longest we have not seen Porcupine caribou in the Yukon in really big numbers,” he said.

Suitor said one can’t assume there is some sort of shift in migration patterns of the barren-ground animals just because they haven’t shown up for five years.

In the early 2000s, it was the opposite and the Gwich’in of Arctic Village were wondering where the caribou were, he said.

Caribou, said Suitor, are unpredictable.

“We say in the caribou world if you think you know something about caribou, wait five minutes.”

Suitor said if the Porcupine herd or a segment of the herd decided today it wanted to move east into the Yukon and south to the Dempster, it would probably take them about three weeks.

The transboundary hunting rights that allow subsistence hunters in the Northwest Territories to hunt Porcupine caribou in the Yukon do not apply currently in the five subzones because there are no Porcupine caribou there, the notice emphasizes.

It notes the closure does not affect citizens of the Tr’ondek Hwech’in or the First Nation of Na-cho Nyak Dun because of harvest provisions set out in their respective aboriginal land claim settlements.