A Caribou Decline Foreshadowed by Inuit in the Central Canadian Arctic: A Retrospective Analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Dolphin and Union (DU) caribou herd (Rangifer tarandus groenlandicus x pearyi), locally referred to as Island caribou, is a unique and at-risk ecotype of caribou that ranges on Victoria Island and the adjacent mainland in the central Canadian Arctic. To facilitate the incorporation of traditional knowledge (TK) and better inform the required species recovery plan, we analyzed an archived set of TK interviews done in Ekaluktutiak and Kugluktuk, Nunavut, in 2003. The overarching theme throughout the interviews was that the DU caribou were dynamic, constantly adapting to the changing environment around them. Accounts provided previously unexplored connections between temporal and spatial trends in DU caribou distribution, population, ecology, and disease syndromes. Findings of fewer animals, range shift, and increased observations of disease in the late 1990s and early 2000s suggest that early signs of the declines that have resulted in the herd being reassessed as endangered today were already apparent to Kugluktukmiut in 2003. In contrast, Ekaluktutiakmiut were seeing a stable population. Shifts in caribou range and consequently harvesting ranges were described by both communities, but more evident in Kugluktuk. When combined, the differing accounts of the two communities provided a deeper understanding of caribou ecology and trends across seasons, years, and a broad spatial range. Community differences demonstrate the cruciality of considering unique place-based perspectives and the importance of mobilizing TK from communities and knowledge keepers throughout the caribou range for a herd-level understanding. This study highlights the importance of timely analyses and reporting on TK studies to ensure a nimble conservation response in a rapidly changing environment.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".