- Indigenous guardians in the Northwest Territories, Canada, are going out into the field to monitor how roads affect Arctic caribou, which undertake the longest terrestrial migration on the planet, through events on the Tibbitt to Contwoyto winter road.
- In the last six years, they have documented a pattern of how caribou avoid roads that bisect the land: When they will avoid crossing, only walk parallel, get trapped on the other side and wait 24 hours of zero disturbance to cross.
- Canada and some Indigenous governments plan to expand roads across the north, like the Arctic Economic and Security Corridor, as part of an Arctic development plan to boost economic opportunities and mining in northern communities.
- As plans for the Arctic Economic and Security Corridor advance, Indigenous guardians and stakeholders underline the need for caribou protections and local jobs in conservation to offer alternatives to industrial opportunities.
For years, Wayne Mercredi spent hours driving the Tibbitt to Contwoyto winter road. Leaving early in the morning to take advantage of limited daylight, he’d travel the road’s 400-kilometer length (250-mile length) — built atop frozen lakes, to connect the territorial capital of Yellowknife to diamond mines farther north — before turning around at the end and driving back home.
On those 19-hour days, Mercredi, a North Slave Métis Alliance guardian, kept his eyes peeled. “I would see caribou off in the distance, avoiding the ice road.”
As caribou appeared on the snowy expanse, he’d record their information. Occasionally, he’d come across an increasingly rare sight: A large herd of caribou, navigating the landscape. “It’s such a beautiful thing, it would just fill my heart.”
The Canadian Arctic is home to once-monumental herds of caribou. These caribou undertake the longest terrestrial migrations on the planet, congregating in large groups at their calving grounds along the way.
Historically, caribou existed in the millions, but in the last several decades, their numbers have declined dramatically; the Bathurst herd, for example (whose name derives from their traditional calving grounds in Bathurst Inlet, Nunavut) numbered nearly half a million caribou in the 1980s but has shrunk to just 3,600 in 2025.
The reasons for this decline are multifaceted, including climate change, industrial development and, in some cases, overharvesting. But many of these forces intersect around roads, which block migrations and expose caribou to more hunting.
Concern over the impacts of roads have promoted Indigenous groups to act, including the North Slave Métis Alliance. For the last six years, the Alliance has been running a program to monitor the Tibbitt to Contwoyto winter road; Mercredi was their first guardian.
With a roughly 1,500-km (932-mi) expansion of roads planned for the Canadian Arctic — including an all-season road from Yellowknife to the Arctic Ocean, the Arctic Economic and Security Corridor — biologists and Indigenous guardians like Mercredi say work to monitor roads’ impacts and to find ways to reduce the impacts is more essential than ever.
“I know that [development] will happen,” Mercredi said. “I’m going to be doing this for the rest of my life, trying to mitigate and offer some advice and direction when it comes to building roads.”
When a road is a canyon
From a human’s perspective, a road opens new territory. But looked at through a caribou’s eye, a road can be a nearly insurmountable barrier.
Roads bring traffic, even the sound of which may deter caribou from crossing. They also bring more hunters, creating at-times unsustainable levels of harvesting.
In some cases, just the presence of a line on the landscape can block caribou, even if they could physically cross, said Benjamin Larue, a postdoctoral fellow at Université Laval in Canada, where he’s studying the effects of roads on migratory caribou.
As an example, Larue pointed to the traditional Inuit hunting practice of building short stone structures, called Inuksuit, on the tundra to funnel caribou through. “It’s been known for thousands of years that caribou don’t want to cross anthropogenic linear structures,” he said. “You can imagine a standard road with traffic is just that on steroids.”
For caribou, this could have devastating implications, as being able to migrate unimpeded over long distances is key to their survival.
In 2020, the North Slave Métis Alliance (NMSA) set out to learn more about the impact.
The Tibbitt to Contwoyto winter road is open in February and March, during which time it hosts near-constant truck traffic, said Orna Phelan, wildlife biologist with the Alliance. Concerned with the impact on caribou, community members approached the Alliance and said they wanted to see what was happening with their own eyes.
The Alliance started with a pilot project, having community members drive the length of the road and document caribou numbers and condition. Initially, Mercredi, who’d decided to get involved after noticing the caribou he’d grown up hunting were disappearing, did the bulk of the guardian work.
But Mercredi said it soon became clear more was needed.
In 2024, the Alliance secured funding from the territorial government to do a traditional knowledge study. This included setting up a semi-permanent camp on the road, allowing guardians to stay on the land for the whole time the road was open (two other Indigenous organizations in the area — the Tłı̨chǫ Government and the Yellowknives Dene First Nation — also have camps on the road).
At camp, guardians patrolled the road in Skidoos and vehicles, recording metrics such as caribou condition and cow-to-calf ratios, as well as interactions with the road. They also documented gut piles, which are left behind by hunters who’ve taken caribou, as a way of understanding harvesting levels.
In three years of full-time winter monitoring, guardians have documented a pattern whereby caribou avoid the road; since 2024, guardians have observed that caribou will walk parallel to the road, but have only noted one instance of caribou crossing, Phelan said. Members have also documented caribou near the road getting spooked by loud trucks.
“From our perspective, it seems like big trucks and loud noises are dissuading the caribou from the road,” Phelan said.
This reflected what the Alliance had discovered with wildlife cameras and audio recorders. Combining that data with researchers who’d put radio collars on caribou, they observed what happened during a winter storm that closed the road to traffic: Data showed it took 24 hours of zero disturbance for caribou to get moving, “and then you see three days later when the traffic starts back up, they get caught on the other side of the road, and they don’t cross back over at all for the whole season,” Phelan told Mongabay.
The economics of roads, caribou and conservation
This isn’t just a concern on the Tibbitt to Contwoyto winter road. Phelan said members wanted to start monitoring with an eye to a much bigger threat: The Arctic Economic and Security Corridor, a proposed all-season road that would run from the Northwest Territories to Nunavut, where it would connect via another all-season road to a port on the Arctic Ocean. It would run in a similar area as the Tibbitt to Contwoyto winter road.
Project proponents (the Tłı̨chǫ Government and the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, in partnership with the government of the Northwest Territories, as well as the West Kitikmeot Resources Corp) say the road system will bring economic opportunities to northern communities, and provide access to the minerals needed for the energy transition through Indigenous-led development.
The project, which is in line with the Canadian government’s focus on increased Arctic sovereignty, also has federal support, and in May, it was referred to Canada’s new major projects office, which is meant to accelerate planning and approvals.
But the proposed road would cut through the migratory habitat of several caribou herds, including the Bathurst herd, whose calving habitat is near the proposed route.
“It’s something that NSMA members are very worried about,” Phelan said. By conducting monitoring on the winter road, they hope to have baseline impact data ready for when a larger road gets built.
Allen Niptanatiak, chairman of the Kugluktuk Hunters and Trappers Organization — Kugluktuk is near the proposed Arctic Ocean port at Grays Bay — is concerned with what an increase in all-season roads could mean for caribou. He and other Inuit hunters already observe winter roads blocking caribou migration, he said. “They’ll go days and days until they can finally find a calm spot, and there’s no traffic, and then they’ll cross.”
This depletes energy reserves when the clock is ticking for caribou to get to good feeding grounds, Niptanatiak said. An all-season road could extend that impact out through the whole year, which he worries could stress caribou at all stages of their life cycle.
With the all-season roads looking all but certain, he hopes proponents will draw on the knowledge of people who spend time on the land — creating local jobs and building in protections for caribou.
“That we’re advocating really strongly: Use the people that know the knowledge, that know the culture. Use them to your advantage,” Niptanatiak said.
The West Kitikmeot Resources Corp (the proponent for the Grays Bay road and port project) said in a statement that these concerns “informed every major caribou design decision, including the road alignment.” The statement also said the organization incorporated the call for real-time Inuit monitors into their monitoring framework discussions and is committed to Inuit co-monitoring.
The Yellowknives Dene First Nation and Tłı̨chǫ Government, which are leading development of the Arctic Economic and Security Corridor, did not respond to a request for comment from Mongabay by the time of publication.
Larue, who is studying the effects of roads on caribou, said having on the ground data is “tremendously helpful” in building a full picture of how roads affect caribou.
Yet guardian programs also offer something else, he said. Programs that pay people to spend time on the land mean “they have a stake in caribou, and protecting them, instead of feeling like they need to [take] industrial opportunities.”
In March, the federal government announced CA$230 million ($161.85 million) to expand the Indigenous Guardians program, including to the Arctic.
But for the NMSA, funding for the winter road guardian program is precarious. Their initial funding was just for three years; recently, they were funded for another three. Consistent, long-term funding for projects is one of the biggest problems Indigenous organizations in the north face, Phelan said. “Even the money we get, it’s not enough to cover the costs of the program.”
Mercredi gets emotional thinking of the impact he’s seen the winter road have on caribou, including the time guardians found a lonely calf wandering the ice after its whole herd was taken by hunters using the winter road. It’s essential to fight for protections for caribou as roads expand, he said.
Without that, Mercredi said, future generations may never experience the wonder he has, at seeing large herds of migratory caribou.
“They’re going to see them either in the zoo or … in a museum,” he said. “It’s not going to be there for them, and that should really concern people.”
Banner image: North Slave Métis Alliance guardian Wayne Mercredi on caribou patrol on the Tibbitt to Contwoyto winter road. Image courtesy of the North Slave Métis Alliance.
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Citations:
Fullman, T. J., Joly, K., Gustine, D. D., & Cameron, M. D. (2025). Behavioral responses of migratory caribou to semi-permeable roads in Arctic Alaska. Scientific Reports, 15(1), 24712. doi:10.1038/s41598-025-10216-6
Brink, J. W. (2005). Inukshuk: caribou drive lanes on southern Victoria Island, Nunavut, Canada. Arctic Anthropology, 42(1), 1–28. doi:10.1353/arc.2011.0084
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Cite this article
Moira Donovan (2026). As Canada eyes Arctic road expansion, Indigenous guardians race to understand caribou. Mongabay Conservation news. DOI: https://doi.org/10.66709/news-321684Credits
