Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road:

Monitoring Program

About Our Program

NSMA’s Guardianship program was developed in 2020 and included caribou monitoring on the Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road. Members would carry out vehicle transects and count caribou and other wildlife along the road. Members would track GPS locations of any wildlife seen along the road and note information such as; health of the animal, sex, approximate age and groups size as well as environmental conditions and human activity.

In Winter 2024, we began construction of a semi-permanent camp on the ice road so that Guardians can stay and monitor caribou for multiple days at a time.

Goals and objectives

Between 2024-2026, NSMA’s goal is to further develop and expand our winter road monitoring program. We aim to quantify spatial and temporal relationships between caribou occurrence and mortality (e.g., gut piles) with caribou disturbance factors (vehicles, predators, noise disturbance) along the length of the Tibbit to Contwoyto winter road throughout the winter road season (Feb-Mar annually).

New data collected in the field (Guardian observations, audio recorders, wildlife cameras) will be compared with member’s traditional and local knowledge. In workshops with members, we will validate field data, note where changes in caribou occurrence and disturbance/mortality factors are suspected from historical conditions, and examine how caribou-people relationships have changed with the road.

Establish a consistent schedule of guardians monitoring the winter road each year with help from our newly hired Winter Road Coordinator.

Traditional Knowledge Input: Provide more local and traditional knowledge of barren-ground caribou to decision-makers and become an active contributor to caribou conservation through traditional knowledge documentation.

Western Science Practices: Develop NSMA's data analysis procedures for wildlife observations, photos, and audio data through a partnership with the State of University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF).

Build capacity within the NSMA to play an active role in the study of cumulative impacts and the management of barren-ground caribou by strengthening our existing guardianship program.

2024 Ice Road Season

In 2024 we placed 9 game cameras and 9 autonomous recording units (ARUs) along the ice road to investigate traffic density and the soundscape that caribou encounter. We are currently working with our partners, the Fate of the Caribou team from State University New York, to analyze all the sound and image files

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This year 6 NSMA Guardians and 3 staff took part in the program for a total of 24 cumulative days of monitoring this season. Guardians took data on the number of caribou seen, along with metrics such as body condition, sex and location. They also noted any incidences of human disturbance to caribou such as driver harassment.

This year we also held 3 workshops for NSMA community members to better understand members historic relationships with caribou and how these relationships have changed over time with the decline of the Bathurst herd. We documented their main concerns, their hypothesis of what caused the decline and their perception of what needs to happen in order to protect caribou.