The Delong Mountain Transportation System (DMST), more commonly known as the Red Dog Road, is an industrial haul road which connects the Red Dog Mine to a port on Chukchi sea. Ore trucks travel southwest along the 52-mile gravel road year-round, transporting lead and zinc concentrates to the Port Site. The powdered ore is then shipped by barge to international markets in the summer when the ice recedes.
The Western Arctic Herd, once the largest caribou herd in the world, passes through the road area. Caribou in the Western Arctic are struggling, with the lowest population numbers in over two decades. Jim Dau studied the herd for over three decades and says the road could be delaying or deterring the caribou migration.
“I wanted people to know that this is really serious, this could be a big deal,” said Dau, retired wildlife biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. He was the department's lead research and management biologist for the Western Arctic Caribou Herd.
According to Dau, the Red Dog road is delaying the herds' fall migration.
He gave presentations about his findings in several Northwest Arctic communities earlier this month.
Dau studied the herd migration using aerial observation from bush planes and using radio telemetry. Radio telemetry transmits radio waves from collared caribou to help pinpoint the animal’s location.
Dau traveled to the area around Red Dog Road during the fall season, where he’d seen physical evidence of the herd migration. He said it was “written in the snow.” Caribou were getting funneled into large curves in the road before they were able to cross.
But Dau wanted more proof so he used the previous year’s data to make a moving map, which plotted out the movement of each collared caribou. And the data the collars revealed shocked him.
“Some of the caribou were delayed up to two months,” said Dau. “Some of them were only delayed a few days. But the average delay was a bit over a month; that was 33 days.”
Dau said that year 21 of the collared caribou came within 30 miles of the Red Dog Road. All but three struggled to cross the road.
“It wasn't very subtle. It looked to me like they had clearly reacted to the road,” Dau said. “Caribou that were far from the Red Dog road, they had no delay at all.”
Dau said that’s a big deal, because those 18 collared caribou that struggled to cross the road, each of them were moving with the herd and represented about 80,000 animals.
“We're not talking about hundreds of caribou or dozens. We're talking about 10s of 1000s of caribou,” Dau said. “Some of those caribou had to have walked two or 300 miles by the time they zigged and zagged, and tried and failed, and finally got across before they crossed the road.”
Dau said once the delayed caribou are able to cross the road, they then “turned on the speed,” making a beeline for their wintering grounds. Although Dau’s initial data on the road’s impact were from 2012, he said it's not an outlier.
“I did similar maps, all the way back to 1994 and I saw similar patterns,” Dau said.
Dau has a theory as to how the road affects the herd’s migration. He believes in years where there were delays, something on the road might have spooked the caribou at the front of the herd. It could be human activity, traffic, or hunters along the road.
“I heard the elders speak and they said over and over, ‘Let the leaders pass, let them establish trails, and then you can hunt, and they won't turn back,’” Dau said. “So that's not data based. But that's based on the 1000s of years of close observation and use.”
Dau said the delayed migration could affect hunters too. When the caribou hustle to their wintering grounds, they’re less accessible to hunters.
While Dau said he’s not for or against the project, the effects of the Red Dog Road also have implications for the proposed Ambler Road. That road, if completed, would be four times the size of the Red Dog Road and is also in the herds’ range.
Recent permitting documents for the Ambler Road project say the road would have much higher traffic than the Red Dog Road. It also acknowledges that even low traffic levels have drastically changed caribou migration patterns.
