Thank you very much.
I am a wildlife veterinarian and a Canadian research chair in Arctic One Health. I have spent 30 years working in northern communities to study and mitigate the impacts of climate change on wildlife health, and it's from this perspective that I'll speak to you today.
Climate change is rapidly, dramatically and irreversibly altering the physical and the biological systems in the Arctic in a myriad of ways. This is having serious downstream consequences for northern food security, cultural continuance, the economy, biosecurity and Arctic sovereignty.
Today, I wanted to share with you just one example about umingmuk, the muskox, to illustrate some of these concepts. During my research over the last 20 years, I've witnessed the largest muskox population in the world, on Banks Island, Canada, undergo a massive decline as a result of climate change driven severe weather events and emerging infectious diseases. In 2003, a rain-on-snow event led to a thick, impenetrable ice layer covering vegetation, resulting in starvation of tens of thousands of muskox and a 50% population decline. This type of severe weather event is only expected to increase in frequency under the current climate scenarios, and it poses as a major threat to caribou, muskox and all other wild life across the Arctic.
Subsequently, between 2010 and 2014, the same muskox population suffered a major disease epidemic, which resulted in an additional 60% decline. This herd essentially went from 72,000 animals down to about 10,000 today. A similar outbreak with similar consequences occurred on Victoria Island nearby, which was previously the second largest muskox population in the world. With these declines, the commercial muskox harvests and the guided sport hunting, which are important contributors to the wage economy on these islands, have ceased, and the food insecurity for these muskox-dependent communities is exacerbated.
By 2021, this emerging disease had spread all the way across the Arctic Archipelago to Ellesmere Island. Similar declines have been seen there, and today, the future of this ice age survivor on the Arctic Archipelago remains uncertain. Detecting, understanding and mitigating the impacts of such catastrophic mortality events and population declines is clearly critical for the ecosystem, for the Inuit communities and for food security.
However, wildlife disease emergence has additional implications for human health, where over 70% of zoonotic emerging infectious diseases in people are of wildlife origin. Avian influenza is just one example, and the disease muskoxen are dying from is another. For national defence, this is really important. Mass mortality events in any wildlife species should be viewed with concern from the biosecurity and biowarfare perspectives, perhaps particularly in the Arctic.
Finally, these issues are really important for Canada's livestock industry, where wildlife disease emergence may threaten our global trade status.
To address these issues, strong, inclusive and innovative research approaches are needed. There are some excellent examples in the Canadian Arctic, where indigenous communities, academia and government are working together to address wildlife health. These include the beluga monitoring program in the western Arctic, the muskox and caribou health monitoring program in the central Arctic and the Arctic Eider Society in Hudson Bay, and there are many others.
Common to these programs are a foundation of respect, a focus on local concerns, concerted efforts to elevate community voices and capacity in research, and braiding indigenous knowledge into western science. However, these programs are expensive. They're typically run on short-term funding. They can stretch the local human resource capacity, and they remain dependent on southern academics or governments. To move forward in science and research in the north, by the north, there really needs to be a significant and sustained investment not only in human resources in the north in the form of training, but also in ongoing support for northerners, not only in research, but also in everything around that: administration of grants and funding, project management and other areas. Arctic colleges and universities are critical to support these goals, but other parallel intersecting initiatives are also critical.
As for accessible research infrastructure, we do have infrastructure in the north, and it's growing. However, it tends to be centralized, and it's not particularly accessible to communities, as it sits within government institutions. Breaking down the barriers for indigenous residents to access this infrastructure is critical. Northern research is incredibly expensive, but quality and quantity time spent in the north, with northern partners, is crucial to develop equitable relationships and to understand and address northern priorities.
Innovative thinking that encompasses indigenous knowledge and ongoing investment in the development of novel technologies that can be implemented in low-resource settings are also needed. Replicating what works in the south is not always an effective strategy for the north, so we need to look to northerners for this innovative thinking.
Finally, Canadian values are really critical when working with northerners. Our Canadian values of working with northerners really must underlie any international collaborations. We need to teach our international partners these values and how to work with communities.
I just want to finish by highlighting to the committee—and I'm certain the committee is aware of it—the recent report by the Council of Canadian Academies on northern research and equity. I'd emphasize that this report really outlines the philosophical underpinning and the paradigm shift that's needed to truly move our research forward in a world-class, effective and ethical way.
Thank you very much.
