Environment committee  We have seen grizzly bears breeding with polar bears. According to Inuvialuit traditional knowledge, that's not new. Some of the hybrids we're seeing now are third and fourth generation. There have always been grizzly bears that far north. There may be more of them, but it may a

Environment committee  We have been doing some work. All the work we've done about wolf population levels shows that they are declining along with the caribou levels, and we're working with our communities to see what's happening and to encourage wolf harvest through the trapping program.

Environment committee  Based on traditional knowledge, it appears that when muskox are in an area—our muskox populations are very healthy right now—they tend to expand, move into new territories, spread out, and then colonize new areas. We are seeing muskox moving south into the treeline now, not neces

Environment committee  The muskox in the far north have been declining. Muskox also tend to do a bit of an explosion and then decline. There are still large numbers of muskox, but we have seen a decline up in Banks Island in the High Arctic islands.

Environment committee  Absolutely. Particularly for caribou, which is, in some areas, the most harvested species, we monitor those populations very closely. This year we'll be spending over $1 million doing wildlife population studies on caribou to see how those populations are doing. We take an adapti

Environment committee  The only thing I want to add is that those declines are not linked to or caused by harvesting of those species. I'm sure many of you know that caribou do have a cycle in which they naturally go up and down, so it's very important, when the caribou are at this low level, that we r

Environment committee  We do have some evidence that the cycles are long. They're probably between 30-year and 50-year cycles. Through traditional knowledge, we do have information that these cycles have happened in the past. In fact, aboriginal people have had to switch game species, food species, and

Environment committee  We are.

Environment committee  Dr. Gunn has suggested that the trends in caribou herds are likely linked to climate, and we don't really understand that very well. We're not sure what the changes due to climate change are going to be and how they are going to affect those cycles.

Environment committee  We haven't seen so much related to the decline in caribou, not yet. We don't know if that's going to happen. It doesn't seem to be one species replacing another, but we are, with climate change, seeing new species moving north. Certainly we're seeing more white-tailed deer moving