Game Conservation in Arctic Canada

• Published in: Polar Record
• Main Author: Roberts, Brian
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1942
• Subjects: General Earth and Planetary Sciences; Ecology; Geography, Planning and Development; Arctic; Northwest Territories; Canada; musk ox; Polar Record
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0032247400040298; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0032247400040298

It is only within comparatively recent years that the problem of conserving the game resources of the Northwest Territories has become a matter requiring the serious attention of those responsible for the administration of the Territories. The slow development of a crisis arose from the lack of co-ordinated knowledge and from the assumption that a sparse human population scattered over an immense area would not necessarily lead to any serious depletion in the numbers of wild animals. Fortunately investigation was begun and a measure of control effected in time; otherwise the story of the plains buffalo might have been repeated in the barren-ground caribou, as it was to a large degree in the musk ox, which are now reduced on the mainland to a few small herds within or close to the Thelon Game Sanctuary.