Polar Record 42 (222): 205���216 (2006). Printed in the United Kingdom. doi:10.1017/S0032247406005481 205 Synergy of local ecological knowledge, community involvement and scientific study to develop marine wildlife areas in eastern Arctic Canada Mark L. Mallory, Alain J. Fontaine and Jason A. Akearok Canadian Wildlife Service, P.O. Box 1714, Iqaluit, NU X0A 0H0, Canada Victoria H. Johnston Canadian Wildlife Service, 5204-50th Ave., Suite 301, Yellowknife, NT X1A 1E2, Canada Received February 2006 ABSTRACT. The Canadian Arctic provides important habitat for millions of marine birds. Some key habitat sites for these have already been protected, but many others lack official protected status and remain vulnerable to various anthropogenic threats. The authors worked with the community of Qikiqtarjuaq, Nunavut, to create two new National Wildlife Areas that protect the colonies, and the nearby marine area, of approximately 500,000 birds during the breeding season. The process has taken two decades to complete, in part due to misunderstanding and mistrust of government on the part of aboriginal residents. In this paper the path that led to the creation of these sites is traced. This has included the approach adopted to collaborating with the local community, incorporating aboriginal (local) ecological knowledge, conducting scientific surveys while building local capacity for further scientific investigation, and finding a solution that addressed the disparate interests of the various stakeholders in this process. Contents Introduction 205 Study area and history 206 Working with the Inuit community 208 Discussion 213 Acknowledgements 213 References 214 Introduction The Canadian Arctic provides breeding, migration or wintering habitat that supports more than 10 million marine birds (Mallory and Fontaine 2004). For many of these species, breeding colonies are immense, sometimes supporting hundreds of thousands of individuals, and similar concentrations of birds stage along floe edges and polynyas during migration (McLaren 1982). Most of these key habitat sites (supporting more than 1% of the Canadian population of a species) have been identified and have received national and international recognition (Brown and others 1975 Nettleship and Smith 1975 Revel 1981), and some have been established as migratory bird sanctuaries or National Wildlife Areas (Alexander and others 1991 Mallory and Fontaine 2004). Indeed, some 15,000 km2 of marine habitat have already been pro- tected as part of these types of conservation areas, which represents about 10% of the identified ���key��� marine bird habitat in this region (Mallory and Fontaine 2004). Other sites still require formal protection in order to reduce risks to wildlife from the increasing threats of oil spills from shipping (FEARO 1984 Dickins and others 1990), hydrocarbon exploration (Imperial Oil Ltd. 1978 Petro- Canada Ltd. 1979), and disturbances from ecotourism (Hall and Johnston 1995). Many of the key marine bird sites in the Arctic are regions of locally high productivity due to physical or chemical influences of sea-ice, and as such these sites are also critical habitat for other species such as marine mammals (Stirling 1997). Accordingly, the protection of these sites is part of Canada���s long- term goals for the creation of important and representative marine protected areas (Day and Roff 2000 Jamieson and Levings 2001 Mallory and Fontaine 2004). In the Canadian Arctic, recent land claim settlements with Inuit have resulted in a new process of wildlife management to ensure that local communities have a role in decision-making. In essence, aboriginal claimants have surrendered their claims to various lands in exchange for financial compensation, a variety of socio-economic benefits, a fixed allocation of private, collectively-owned lands, certain wildlife harvesting rights, and a meaningful role in the management of their settlement areas (INAC 1993). Establishment of new protected areas requires extensive consultation with local communities and land claim-specific co-management boards, the development of local co-management committees, and, in many cases, the inclusion of local or traditional ecological knowledge in the process (Government of Nunavut 2002 Mallory and others 2003c). Inuit local ecological knowledge (or Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, hereafter LEK) is an important component of Arctic wildlife management, in some cases providing a long term perspective on local ecology not available through western science (Berkes 1981 Duerden and Kuhn 1998 Gunn and others 1998), and has been used successfully to gather relevant management information on various wildlife species (Stewart and others 1995 Ferguson and others 1998 Hay 2000 Mallory and others 2003b). LEK provides good data on distributional information of bird species (Nakashima and Murray 1988

206 MALLORY, FONTAINE, AKEAROK, AND JOHNSTON Nakashima 1993), particularly in remote regions that are difficult to survey using standard methods (Mallory and others 2003b), and thus it is suited for inclusion in protected areas planning. In this paper is discussed some of the issues involved in creating two new National Wildlife Areas, almost entirely marine, around two key seabird colonies on eastern Baffin Island, Nunavut. The cultural and scientific history of these sites are described, and the process used to create candidate protected area boundaries that met both the desires of the community as well as the wildlife management needs of the Canadian federal government. This process has been successful, though prolonged, and this summary is offered both as a record and a roadmap for similar endeavours with aboriginal communities in Canada and elsewhere (Jaireth and Smyth 2003). Study area and history Physical characteristics The two seabird colonies are located on eastern Baffin Island, Nunavut, centred around 67���N, 62���W (Fig. 1). One colony is located on Cape Searle (formed by two 430 m rock towers at the eastern tip of Qaqulluit Island), and is known to Inuit from the nearby community of Qikiqtarjuaq as ���Qaqulluit���, which means ���fulmars��� in Inuktitut. The second colony is located south of Reid Bay, on a promontory with cliffs and spires rising to 900 m and known as ���The Minarets��� to seabird biologists, but known as ���Akpait��� (Brunnich���s �� guillemots or murres) to the local community. The rock of this region is of Palaeoprotero- zoic undivided metasedimentary composition (De Kemp 1999), with notable cross-bedding of agglomerates and tuffaceous materials in some locations (Kidd 1953). This region is part of the high Arctic oceanographic zone (Nettleship and Evans 1985), and the local seas are cov- ered by landfast and sea ice between October and July annually (Smith and Rigby 1981). However, at the time of autumn ice formation, large waves and strong, south- flowing currents make the ice very rough and often unpredictable in all but the sheltered fjords, so travel in this area can be difficult (Graham 1997). Temperatures average ���25���C in January and 5���C in July, with annual precipitation of 600 mm, but the relief of the local Arctic cordillera and the presence (or absence) of ice create a wide range of local microclimates (Jacobs and others 1985). Biological characteristics Cape Searle [Qaqulluit] is purportedly the largest northern fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis) colony in Canada, with the colony estimated at 200,000 birds (or 100,000 pairs) during the breeding season (Hatch and Nettleship 1998 but see below). Other important species known to breed at the site include glaucous gulls (Larus hyperboreus), Iceland gulls (L. glaucoides), and black guillemots (Cep- phus grylle) (Mallory and Fontaine 2004). The Minarets [Akpait] is one of the five largest Brunnich���s �� guillemot or thick-billed murre (Uria lomvia) colonies in Canada, estimated to support over 260,000 Brunnich���s �� guillemots (130,000 pairs), as well as several thousand black-legged kittiwakes (Rissa tridactyla) and 20,000 northern fulmars (10,000 pairs) (Gaston and Smith 1987). Because the two sites are only 50 km apart, this part of the Baffin Island coastline probably supports more than 500,000 marine birds during the summer. Human history Archaeological sites in the study area suggest low density occupation by various Inuit cultures for the last 4,000 years, and Norse Vikings travelled in this area around 1000 A.D. (Graham 1997). Expeditions in 1839���1840 visited Durban Island as part of whaling and exploration efforts (Graham 1997), and by the mid- 1800s, the massive rock towers at Cape Searle were known to Scottish whalers (Taylor 1863) who hunted various whales in this area, as well as the Atlantic walrus (Odobenus rosmarus). The area was important to Inuit for hunting, especially for marine mammals, birds and fish (Kemp 1971). In more recent times, there was a traditional Inuit settlement on Padloping Island (Fig. 1). Boas (1885) first reported Inuit living here, although they moved away from the site in the early part of the 1900s, perhaps in response to the establishment of a hospital, Anglican mission and trading post farther south. The U.S. Coast Guard, the Canadian Department of Transport and the U.S. military operated weather and radar monitoring sites at Padloping and Durban islands between the 1940s and 1960s, which led to the re-formation of a community on Padloping Island. However, with the abandonment of these sites in the 1960s, the community was relocated to Qikiqtarjuaq 100 km farther north. Previous scientific investigation Early exploration of the area was conducted by whalers in the 1840s (Graham 1997), and some vegetation surveys were undertaken in 1860 (Taylor 1863). Surprisingly, there is no mention of the seabird colonies at that time. The first suggestion of a fulmar colony at Cape Searle came from Kumlien (1879), and was confirmed by Boas (1885). The first census of the Cape Searle colony was conducted in 1950, where Wynne-Edwards (1952a, 1952b) estimated that 200,000 birds occupied the site. Watson (1957) considered that only 25,000 fulmars inhabited Cape Searle, but he conducted his census in late May, a time when many fulmars leave colonies prior to egg-laying (Hatch and Nettleship 1998). Interestingly, none of these expeditions mentioned the Brunnich���s �� guillemot colony at The Minarets, although local Inuit probably told the investigators about the site. The difficulties of accessing The Minarets safely by dog team in the spring or summer probably precluded a site inspection. The Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS) surveyed these seabird colonies in the early 1970s during regional