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The Danish-Greenlandic Environmental Cooperation

Natural resource management and information dissemination

It would be so easy if there were enough birds and fish. If there were enough space. But in Greenland, there is not enough. There is not enough space, because people are clustered together in cities and villages, and so their activities - fishing and hunting trips - usually take place within a small area. There are too many people in Greenland to live directly off the country's own natural resources.

In any case, that is not the intention. However, since birds and fish are utilized by both professional hunters, and by people that want to hunt and fish in their free time - just like in Denmark - it is necessary to agree upon the shared management of nature and its resources.

That can be done in many ways, and that is what this chapter is about. It is also about the necessity of continuing the discussion of how we want to use nature and its resources. The decisions must be shared on both the local and the global level. The local community in a village that wonders why the common eider is declining should be in touch with other villages to hear whether the lack of eiders is general in the area. They should also be in contact with biologists, who can tell them if the common eider is declining all over Greenland or all over the world.

Local over-exploitation

Let us take the management of thickbilled murres as an example. The conclusion is clear: the thick-billed murre has been overexploited locally, but is not threatened on a global level. Collective management and thorough information dissemination are needed, as it turns out that many of the hunters involved do not know if the murres they kill come from their own area or from other colonies.

Biologists are reasonably sure of the results they come up with because they cooperate internationally. In practice, much of the information comes from bird banding. The banding of birds and the recovery of rings has mapped out the most important migration routes, and shown where the birds are at different times of the year.

There are, in all, twenty-three thickbilled murre colonies in Greenland. Each year, between 200,000 and 400,000 are killed. And the thick-billed murre, which is the country's most important game bird, contributes between three and twelve million crowns (c. 360,000-1,400,000 US dollars) a year to the Greenlandic economy.

But during the year, hunters in Greenland shoot murres from different populations. That is because of the complicated migration patterns the different populations follow.

	In the southernmost part of Greenland, the hunters mostly kill birds from Svalbard.
	Hunters in the central parts of West Greenland mostly shoot birds from the colonies in West Greenland and northeastern Canada (Nunavut).
	From Disko Bay north in the early spring, hunters can shoot murres that are on their way to their breeding grounds in Upernavik, Avanersuaq and Canada.

In order to say anything serious about the occurrence of the thick-billed murre, it is necessary to divide Greenland up into different areas: northwestern, midwestern, and southwestern Greenland.

Some of the largest thick-billed murre colonies are in northwest Greenland, which is sparsely populated. It seems that these colonies are pretty stable. Further south, things look worse. Especially in the southern part of Upernavik district, Uummannaq municipality and in Disko Bay, the colonies have declined drastically. Within fifty years, fifty to ninety percent of some colonies has disappeared. Other colonies have vanished entirely.

In five years a pair of thick-billed murres can become at the most eight thickbilled murres.

South of Disko Bay, there are a number of smaller colonies. Some in decline. Some stable. One of them seems to be growing. But the colonies here are generally small, so it does not mean much in the big picture if they grow or decline a little.

Bad news from the west coast

There is obviously someone behind this information on the murres. Flemming Merkel from the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources and Knud Falk from the Danish Polar Center are both ornithologists who work intensively with the thickbilled murre. Over the years, Dancea has supported some of the research on thickbilled murres. I asked Flemming Merkel if hunters are generally aware of the situation with the murres.

"They are well-informed locally. But they do not have an overview of how things look for the whole of Greenland," answers Flemming Merkel. "That means that they sometimes make hasty conclusions. If they see that their own colonies are in decline, maybe they will conclude that the murres are breeding somewhere else."

The most recent information is that the populations are still declining in the southern part of Upernavik district, and that the same is true of Ilulissat. The thickbilled murre colonies in Uummannaq have disappeared. The little colony in Qaqortoq has also declined, as have the only two colonies in East Greenland (near Ittoqqortoormiit).

Regarding the reasons the thickbilled murre has declined in some places, Knud Falk remarks: "Hunting is a significant reason. There are problems in the places where the thick-billed murre only appears during breeding season. People hunting in the winter in southwest Greenland are not killing local breeding birds. It is the spring hunt that is the problem. Especially in the areas near the towns in Upernavik district and in East Greenland, where the population has been overexploited."

Of the 200,000-400,00 thick-billed murres killed each year, eighty percent are shot in southwest Greenland in the winter. And the timing of the hunt determines how much pressure is put on the population.

"If the hunters in Upernavik district shoot 5000 thick-billed murres, the hunters here think that it is unimportant, but it isn't," says Knud Falk and continues, "5000 murres shot in Melville Bay can do more damage than 50,000 shot in southwest Greenland. In Upernavik, the murres are shot during their breeding season. The hunt in southwest Greenland involves mostly the young, birds that would have died in the winter cold anyway. The wintering areas accommodate birds from Norway, Iceland and Canada. That pretty much means that the winter hunt draws on foreign young, and the local hunts take the local breeding birds. It is much more sustainable to shoot the winter birds than the breeding birds," concludes Knud Falk.

In five years, a pair of ptarmigan can become 2000 ptarmigan.

There are many other influences besides hunting. There is egg collecting, both legal and illegal. There are predators, first and foremost the glaucous gull. There are disturbances, as we will see in a moment.

Hunting thickbilled murre young.

The community center

I asked Flemming Merkel how the hunters receive his messages at the meeting in the community center.

"The people in Upernavik feel unfairly treated. They feel that they have a right to the same resources. They do not feel it is reasonable that they can't utilize the thickbilled murres in the summer.

"We make a big effort to tell them about the biology of the thick-billed murre, because it is so special.

"The thick-billed murre only breeds when it is five years old, and never has more than one chick at a time. When a population has been halved, it takes ages to recover. This is where the disagreements arise. The hunters don't believe that the thick-billed murre only has one egg a year. Or they choose not to believe it.

"They can't understand that it is worse to shoot the old birds in the mountains either. They think that it is worse to shoot the young birds in the winter. It contradicts the prevalent view that children are the most important. It is, in fact, the opposite for the thick-billed murre. Only twenty percent of the thick-billed murres ever become old enough to lay eggs.

There is a big difference between how damaging thickbilled murre hunting is in the different parts of Greenland.

"So if you kill a young thickbilled murre, you kill one fifth of an adult murre. If you kill an adult murre, you lose a bird that would have laid eggs and had chicks for many years.

"As humans, we think that the future rests on the children. If the ship sinks, it is the women and children that should be saved first.

"With thick-billed murres, it is the opposite. There is a naturally high mortality rate in the early years. This can be exploited, because many of these birds will die anyway," concludes Flemming Merkel.

The public meetings are very important to the biologists from the Greenlandic Institute of Natural Resources, to the representatives of the Ministry of Environment and Nature, and to the local hunters. Many hunters are informed about the migration conditions and biology of the thickbilled murre. Biologists and administrators get some insight into what the hunting periods mean in practice, for example, that the short hunting season brings about an intensive hunt in May where so many murre are shot that a large portion of the take is frozen.

Thick-billed murres for sale. Thickbilled murre hunting in Greenland has reached a level that is not sustainable - at least, not locally. A once large population in Uummannaq has disappeared, and in Upernavik, especially the colonies near the towns have been drastically reduced. The main cause seems to be that until 1988, hunting during the breeding period was legal. The population of thickbilled murres in the sparsely populated Avanersuaq (Thule) seems, on the other hand, to be intact, and today, more thick-billed murres breed there than in all the other parts of Greenland combined. The small colonies in East Greenland are also declining. The most significant decline took place before the hunting rules were passed, and it will take ages for the population to recover, because the thickbilled murre only becomes fertile when it is five years old.

Regulations

When a population is under pressure - in this case the thick-billed murre population - it is necessary to regulate the hunt. This can be done with:

	Closed seasons.
	Safety zones - like important breeding and resting sites.
	Restrictions on hunting methods.
	Restrictions on who is allowed to hunt the thick-billed murre.
	Quotas
	Restrictions on trade in thickbilled murres.

As far as we know, there are no longer captains that sound their sirens in order to see thousands of murres all leaving the bird cliffs at once. A disturbance that causes loss of eggs and young every time.

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