CWF’s Larry Niles is in Northern Canada searching for Red Knots and other shorebirds in their Arctic breeding territory. We are following him as he reports from the field. The following is a summary of his latest blog posts.
It has been a grueling, but exhilarating, last few days for our team. At long last, we’ve reached our study site. Anyone else would have looked at this barren plateau and wondered what all the fuss was about, but our team fist-bumped with pride. After three tries, we had finally made it – but getting here was an arduous process we won’t soon forget.
We left Coral Harbour on Wednesday afternoon with three ATVs and a truck, as well as a new team member. Josh is our “bear-watcher,” an experienced Inuit hunter whose job is to discourage or, if absolutely necessary, kill an attacking polar bear. We can only hope his services will not be required.
We had hoped that the road out of town, which was recently extended, might take us all the way to our study site – but it was not to be. Four hours after leaving Coral Harbour, we reached a point where we had to depart from the road and traverse out into the roadless tundra.
We set out by ATV the next morning, but soon ran into trouble. To get to the knot plateau, we had to cross the Sutton River, one of Southampton Island’s major rivers. It’s a gentle stream where it crosses the road, but at the place where we needed to cross it was a wide valley, within which lay one of the most formidable wetlands in the Arctic. The ground shook like Jell-O as we walked, and if an ATV so much as scratched the surface it was down to its axles. After five hours, we had to give up.
At Josh’s suggestion, the next day we travelled about 15 miles downriver to a crossing used by Inuit hunters. The river was wider there, but we were optimistic because the riverbank was high ground, so we could drive up or downriver over easily-traversed terrain. But after four attempts with the ATV, we could see the river was too deep to cross. The knot plateau was within sight on the other side, but for a second time we had to drive away.
Finally, Rick found an almost entirely dry ridge of high ground about three miles to the west of our camp. After crossing the Sutton River near its headwaters, it was five hours of rough riding with fully-loaded ATVs along the ridge to get back to the knot plateau. When the plateau finally rose up before us, we were elated. We drove six more miles before finally setting camp along one of the many lakes in the complex.
The big question we will answer tomorrow is: do knots still use this area? In 1999, there were at least four times as many knots as there were three years ago, following the collapse of the Delaware Bay horseshoe crab population. Knots have disappeared entirely from many areas of the Arctic – are they still here? We shall find out tomorrow.
For the original blog entries, see Larry’s posts: Polar Bears and Roadless Tundra, On to the Land, River Crossings, and Third Time’s a Charm.
Stay tuned for further updates!