{"id":108212,"date":"2025-08-30T17:47:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T17:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/108212\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T17:47:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T17:47:15","slug":"a-lot-of-people-have-no-clue-about-the-nwts-skunks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/108212\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A lot of people have no clue\u2019 about the NWT\u2019s skunks"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Northwest Territories skunks go, this one looked pretty happy.<\/p>\n

Brent Kotchea, passing by on Highway 5 east of Hay River, filmed the skunk noodling around in the foliage near the road this month, looking perfectly at home.<\/p>\n

He shared the video to Facebook with one simple question: \u201cWhat on earth?\u201d<\/p>\n

A skunk bops along by the side of the highway near Hay River. Video: Brent Kotchea<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people don\u2019t know about the skunks,\u201d said Pete Cott, a manager in the NWT government\u2019s wildlife management division, after Cabin Radio sent him the footage.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince this came up today in my inbox, I\u2019ve been talking to people about skunks and a lot of people had no clue.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The GNWT\u2019s website carries a file on the striped skunk<\/a>, Mephitis mephitis, which lists two sightings of skunks near Enterprise and Louise Falls, 15 years ago, as possibly the first on record in the Hay River area.<\/p>\n

In Fort Smith, they\u2019re more of a common sight.<\/p>\n

\u201cI looked on iNaturalist<\/a>, for instance, and there were two striped skunk reports for the Northwest Territories, both around Fort Smith in May 2024 and 2025,\u201d said Cott, referring to a website where people can submit their own sightings of flora and fauna.<\/p>\n

Suzanne Carriere was a territorial wildlife biologist until she retired 18 months ago. She loved the work.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThat job is to be the whatever-ologist,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen people don\u2019t know what it is, usually it would end up on my table. What I told everybody was: I don\u2019t know how to identify some species, but I know people that know. It\u2019s always about who you know.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a bid to expand who she knew, Carriere helped grow a Facebook group named NWT Species<\/a>. She considers it one of the few good reasons to be on Facebook \u2013 a chance to share sightings and information about plants and animals with others.<\/p>\n

Over the years, NWT Species has helped illuminate for Carriere that there might be more skunks in the South Slave than the GNWT previously thought.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re not new to the Fort Smith area but they show up in Hay River once in a while,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s probably a population farther south, south of Fort Smith. There are usually skunks at the dump. Skunks really like humans. They get mad at them because humans bother them, but they like human habitat, or they survive in human habitat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vagrant raccoons<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another common North American animal that most people insist can\u2019t be found in the territory: the raccoon.<\/p>\n

Yet there are also records of raccoon sightings<\/a> in the North.<\/p>\n

The territorial species infobase has a sighting logged in 2003, describing a large male being live trapped at Fort Fitzgerald and a female with young \u201calso hanging around there.\u201d<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s nothing on record since, but that doesn\u2019t mean raccoons can be entirely ruled out.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are reports of raccoons. They haven\u2019t been established. Raccoons haven\u2019t really made their way westward or northward that much \u2013 they\u2019re only starting to get established in Edmonton, for instance,\u201d said Cott.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got them listed in our species report as a vagrant. One could have hitched a ride on a truck or something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

A vagrant, Carriere explained, is an animal that reaches a specific area (like the NWT) but doesn\u2019t reproduce there and isn\u2019t seen regularly.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need to be able to move. So a plant will never be vagrant, for example. But bats can be vagrant. Lots of birds can be vagrant,\u201d Carriere said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s really, really important to keep track of those, because it tells you a lot about the state of the environment here and also elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI would love for people to tell me if they have seen raccoons in Fort Smith in recent years. I would not be surprised. Even a small animal like a raccoon or a skunk can walk, of course, and they can explore. They are kind-of creeping up north but sometimes they don\u2019t make it, and then you don\u2019t see any for decades,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo when you say there\u2019s no raccoon in the Northwest Territories, you\u2019re probably right, but people will probably call the government or call you and say, \u2018You\u2019re wrong, I\u2019ve seen them.’\u201d<\/p>\n

How about in Yellowknife?<\/p>\n

Cott says tracking the presence of skunks \u2013 or for that matter, raccoons \u2013 in the NWT is important because it helps to establish how species\u2019 ranges are changing with the climate.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019re seeing species like these moving more northward with our climate warming,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwenty years ago, there weren\u2019t a lot of magpies around. There weren\u2019t as many coyotes. A lot of these animals, as conditions become more favourable, are moving farther north, expanding their range northward.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, he said, the \u201ccharismatic macrofauna\u201d of the North \u2013 the likes of caribou \u2013 \u201ctake a lot of our attention, obviously, and rightfully so,\u201d leaving skunk tracking to amateur enthusiasts who take the time to add sightings to iNaturalist or NatureServe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He urges anyone who spots a skunk (or raccoon) to log it on one of those websites or report it to the Department of Environment and Climate Change.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce that ID has been confirmed by a few sources, it becomes a scientifically credible observation,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s useful for tracking change over time and for assessment reports for biodiversity, understanding what kinds of species we\u2019ve got.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also has one more tip for skunk spotters: \u201cMost people know this, but don\u2019t\u2026 don\u2019t annoy the skunk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carriere, meanwhile, says Yellowknife remains devoid of skunks even if the South Slave has a few who\u2019ve made the region home.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you smell a skunk in Yellowknife,\u201d she said diplomatically, \u201cit\u2019s something else.\u201d<\/p>\n

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