BARREN-GROUND CARIBOU DISTRIBUTION IN LATE WINTER 2004, CENTRAL NWT

The area from Great Slave Lake to the Mackenzie delta and east to the Coronation Gulf area of Nunavut is the wintering range for several barren-ground caribou herds including the Cape Bathurst, Bluenose-West, Bluenose-East and Bathurst herds. Between February and April 2004 we surveyed this area in order to map the distribution of wintering caribou, as some communities had reported the absence of caribou from some of their typical wintering areas. We used fixed winged aircraft flown along predetermined transect lines to map the caribou distribution in survey areas. We found that caribou were widely distributed across the western NWT in late winter 2004 and that the highest concentration of caribou was found southwest of Great Bear Lake. Lower numbers of caribou were on the arctic coast northeast of Tuktoyaktuk and a band of caribou was spotted extending southeast from Inuvik to northeast of Colville Lake. There were also caribou along the east side of Great Bear Lake to east of the Coppermine River. The Bluenose-West herd normally winters from the southern Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula and Husky Lakes area to Paulatuk and south to Great Bear Lake. However, in winter 2003-2004, most caribou appeared to winter in the area of Great Bear Lake, possibly in response to freezing rain along the coast and deeper snow than usual in the Inuvik Region. As expected, there was also some overlap found between the herds in the use of winter ranges.