The Newfoundland Murre Hunt

Traditional Turr Hunting in Canada and Greenland

May 13, 2009

The aboriginal people and settlers of Newfoundland and Labrador, and Greenland, have hunted murres for food for generations. Now the birds need conservation.

Both Thick-billed (Uria lomvia) and Common Murres (Uria aalge) live in the northeast Atlantic in the hundreds of thousands, fishing along the Continental shelf and breeding on remote inaccessible sea cliffs. Though not officially considered a game bird, murres have been eaten by people since prehistoric times.

Inhabitants of Newfoundland and Labrador hunt murres, or turrs, for food during the winter months. The birds are hunted by boat, and today, hunters usually set out equipped with motor boats and guns, tools that allow them to kill more birds over a wider area. At the peak of the hunt, estimates put the number shot annually at more than 700,000, mostly Thick-billed Murres. Birds were shot for personal use as well as for commercial sale.

The people of Greenland have also long relied on murres for food. Here, the hunting went on all winter, but hunters also had access to summer breeding colonies, and harvested both birds and eggs. Estimates put the number of birds killed in Greenland per year at about 283,000 to 386,000 up until the late 1980s. As in Canada, the birds were consumed by hunters, and sold in local markets. They were also sold to processing plants.

Some colonies in Greenland have been hunted to extinction, possibly because of the pressure caused by summer killing of breeding birds.

Canadian Conservation of Murres

Laws designed to protect game birds and migratory birds in Canada failed to address murres effectively for much of the twentieth century. The Migratory Bird Convention of 1916 did not address the rights of aboriginal people to hunt birds in the north outside the hunting season, and the murres of Newfoundland were not included because Newfoundland did not become a Canadian province until 1949.

Initially, under the Migratory Bird Convention, the Newfoundland murre hunt was technically illegal because the bird was considered a migratory non-game bird. Recognizing the importance of the murre as a winter food source in Newfoundland and Labrador, however, the Canadian government officially allowed murre hunting, but only for personal consumption. There were no limits on the number of birds that could be killed, and no monitoring of murre populations. Without an amendment to the Migratory Bird Convention, this provision had questionable legal standing.

The first amendment to the Migratory Bird Convention addressing the murre hunt came in 2000 followed by the establishment of a hunting season, hunting zones and limits on the number of birds each hunter could take. This, combined with already ongoing public education efforts, reduced the annual number of murres taken by more than half. A second amendment in 2001 stipulated that hunters must hold a hunting permit and must hunt murres only for food for personal consumption. Permits at last allowed for relatively accurate estimates of the number of murres killed each year by hunters, and paved the way for effective conservation of the species.

Oil pollution in the oceans and fishing nets also cause murre deaths. At the height of the hunting, the death toll due to human activities was estimated at a million birds a year. These numbers have dropped, hopefully far enough to prevent further decline in murre populations.

Sources:

“Thick-billed Murre Hunting in West Greenland, 1988-89.” 1992. Falk, Knud and Jan Durinck. Arctic 45 (2): 167-178.

"Unfinished Business: Amending the Migratory Birds Convention." 1993. Northern Perspectives 21 (2). www.carc.org

The copyright of the article The Newfoundland Murre Hunt in Wild Birds is owned by Rosemary Drisdelle. Permission to republish The Newfoundland Murre Hunt in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.