Gunner Quinn
The mass slaughter of as many as 75 caribou in Manitoba, including cows carrying unborn calves, is prompting calls for changes to the way the species is managed in the province, especially as it relates to Indigenous hunting rights.
Residents of a local First Nations community were responsible for the harvest, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The Manitoba Wildlife Federation (MWF) has publicized the incident in an effort to spur conversations around how Indigenous communities sometimes harvest caribou.
“We’d like to see a co-management board set up that starts to impose rules. There has to be harvest reporting. There has to be some period where harvesting stops,” Rob Olson told MeatEater. Olson is the senior science advisor for the MWF, and he previously served as the president of the Delta Waterfowl Foundation. “There needs to be rules for all hunters, including Indigenous, if we want to keep caribou on the land.”
Nueltin Lake Lodge, where the incident took place, is the site of the ancestral hunting grounds of the Northlands Denesuline First Nation. Chief Simon Denechezhe said in a statement to the Canadian Broadcasting Company that he’s deeply disturbed by these reports.
“Our people have always honoured the caribou, understanding its importance not only to our way of life, but to the balance of our ecosystem,” he said. “What is reported to have happened is not a reflection of our values or practices.”
Large-scale caribou harvesting has happened before, but this is one of the first times it has been documented so thoroughly, Olson says. On April 11, 2025, an American named Nick Scigliano visited a set of lodges he’d purchased in Nueltin Lake Provincial Park in the far north of Manitoba. As he flew over, he noticed people illegally occupying the buildings he’d purchased.
He chose not to land and confront the occupants, but from the air, he saw piles of caribou carcasses strewn throughout the property.
Scigliano returned a week later on April 18 with staff members of the Manitoba Wildlife Federation (of which he is a member), three officers with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and a provincial conservation officer.
Some of the cabins were still occupied when they arrived, but they landed at the airstrip located beside the main lodge. What they found, Olson says, shocked even the most experienced hunters among them.
“I’ve been hunting a long time, and there’s no telling how many animals I’ve processed. I’m not squeamish,” Olson said. “I’m not necessarily an emotional guy, but I was emotional. I’ve never held a fully formed calf from a gut pile. These caribou calves looked like they were going to run away.”
“As a biologist, I know what this means,” he continued. “I know what it means for a population of caribou that’s down by fifty percent. To sit there and see that, the gravity of it, it was overwhelming. An overwhelming feeling of dread, like, where is this going?”
Olson did not perform necropsies on every carcass he saw, but he estimated that there were between 50 and 75 animals grouped in piles around the property. On some, most of the meat had been harvested. But on many others, at least half the meat had been left to rot.
Near the airstrip, Olson and his colleagues found five large piles of caribou heads and carcasses. They inspected two of those piles, digging through the snow to discover the remains of six caribou. All were cows, and the three they necropsied were carrying fully formed, unborn calves. These cows had survived wolves and winter, and were almost ready to give birth when they were killed.
Olson stressed that the Manitoba Wildlife Federation isn’t aiming to vilify Canada’s Indigenous communities. Many, he says, have also called for change.
“I’ve seen lots of Indigenous people–friends, colleagues–speaking out and saying, ‘This has to change. The story has to come out to create change.’ And that’s the difficult part,” he said. “We’re working to collaborate, negotiate fair outcomes so that everyone can access the land.”
Indigenous hunters in Canada have the right to hunt at any time of year and harvest as many animals as they want, in part because they rely on a steady supply of meat to survive. But of the 20 total caribou that Olson inspected, he found 12 wasted quarters that were left behind. Olson also found the entire front halves of six caribou, and he was only able to check about a quarter of the total estimated carcasses.
What’s more, all hunters, no matter their status, are legally required to harvest all edible meat. It is also illegal to enter private property, which these groups of hunters allegedly did. Olson says that the land on which the caribou were butchered was private, and the cabins had been damaged, including furniture that had been broken and used as firewood.
Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew (the equivalent of a U.S. state governor) said that those responsible for this incident will be punished.
“Anybody who participated in this has no respect for animals, has no right to be able to hunt in this province, and will be pursued and held accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” Kinew told the legislature, according to the Winnipeg Free Press.
The actions of these individuals violate responsible hunting ethics, but they may also have broader implications for the long-term health of the caribou herd.
“If this kind of harvest continues, there’s not going to be caribou. You don’t have to be a wildlife biologist to see that,” Olson said.
The animals that were killed were part of a large barren-ground caribou herd in northern Manitoba known as the Qamanirjuaq herd. This herd overwinters in the forested region of northern Manitoba and then makes its way back to Nunavut in the spring to have their young. The pregnant cows go back first, which is why all the caribou Olson checked, except for possibly one, were female.
Killing these cows at this time of year has a much greater impact on the herd than killing bulls or non-pregnant cows. And even cows that aren’t killed often abort their young as a result of being chased by snowmobiles, which is the only way to hunt them in winter.
The Qamanirjuaq herd has declined by about 50% in the last 30 years, from 496,000 animals in 1994 to 253,000 animals in 2022. While Olson stressed that no one can name a single factor that caused the decline, these kinds of large-scale harvests aren’t sustainable.
“If you want to reduce any ungulate population in North America, you lay heavy mortality on the females right before they have young because it’s most likely to be additive mortality. No one can say for sure what impact this hunt is having on the decline, but there’s no doubt it’s not helpful,” he said. “This is the last thing you’d do as a manager if the population is declining.”
Read the full article here