Jason Unrau
Northern News Services
Wednesday, January 31, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - A government biologist says caribou numbers published in a newspaper advertisement are wrong and his department plans to prove that to the people who paid for the ad in coming days.

In the past week, fullpage ads questioning government caribou population statistics have appeared in Yellowknifer and NWT News/North.

The advertisement, based on a caribou population review paid for by outfitters Boyd Warner and John Andre, said the barren ground herds have experienced a 336 per cent surge in population from 1980 to 2006, and sets the Bathurst herd's numbers at 394,000.

Those numbers aren't true, said Environment and Natural Resources biologist Ray Case.

"We're prepared to sit down and discuss the numbers," he said.

Case added that the department stands by its numbers, which show all caribou herds in the Northwest Territories are experiencing decline. The Bathurst herd has suffered the steepest drop, according to ENR, with a present population of 128,000, down from 476,000 in 1986.

"ENR is arranging a meeting with the outfitters to go over in detail our research programs," said Case, ENR's senior biologist and manager of the department's technical support unit.

According to Warner, the numbers used to compile the outfitters' report are available online at ENR's Web site and at the CircumArctic Rangifer Monitoring and Assessment Network's Web site.

Attempts by Yellowknifer to find ENR figures to support Warner and Andre's advertisement and presentation www.nwtcaribounumbers.com were unsuccessful.

Warner is among 10 barren ground outfitters who stand to lose a lot of money or go bankrupt after ENR recently cut their caribou-tag quota in half, to 750.

"The biggest mistake ENR has done, they've attributed the whole harvest - 5,744 caribou - against one group of caribou," he said.

Warner said that with herds constantly on the move, user groups including outfitters and resident and aboriginal hunters are likely taking from more than just the Bathurst herd.

"This myth that the caribou are declining, ENR's own numbers show that this is not the case," said Warner. "It's our belief that the only way this can be solved is for an independent body to come in and sort through this."