SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Caribou tags for commercial, resident and outfitter hunts should be eliminated if that will help stabilize caribou populations, the territory's environment minister says.

A joint report released this week by the territorial and the Tlicho governments recommends all tags be eliminated until 2012, when the next calving ground census on the Bathurst caribou herd is completed.

A survey completed on the herd in June this year revealed an unprecedented decline in the number of animals. Survey figures indicated the herd has declined to 31,897 from 128,047 in just three years.

"The herd's well-being and survival is what's driving this," said Michael Miltenberger, minister of Environment and Natural Resources. "We're acting on the precautionary principle and we've put forward these recommendations."

Eliminating tags for outfitters - who currently get 75 tags per year - and resident and commercial hunts will only stop the harvesting of a small number of caribou in the grand scheme of things, but Miltenberger said the government has to do what it can to protect the caribou and aboriginal people who rely on the hunt.

"Our obligations, the system we're engaged in recognizing constitution, land claims and self-government and rights, we work our way down and it starts with outfitters," said Miltenberger. "We need to do everything we can to protect the subsistence hunt."

Upon learning about the drastic declines reported, the Yellowknives Dene cancelled its community hunt.

The report offers a series of joint proposals to help improve the stability of the herd, including increasing check stops on winter roads, improved education and even having aboriginal hunters report their harvesting. The GNWT proposes to limit the number of caribou aboriginal people are allowed to hunt to under four digits, according to Miltenberger. The Tlicho do not support the proposal.

John Andre, an outfitter from Montana who runs an outfitting camp in the NWT, said he plans to oppose the proposal in January next year at public discussions by the Wekeezhii Renewable Resource Board. He said the fact the territorial government can't show what has happened to the caribou makes him question its motives.

"They're saying these caribou have disappeared and they can't find any evidence of dead carcasses," Andre told Yellowknifer. "They've got to do better than this."

Boyd Warner, owner of Bathurst Inlet Lodge, said he isn't surprised the lodge could lose its tags, but said he doesn't understand how the government plans to implement a management plan on one specific herd.

"There are three groups of caribou that live in the North Slave region, when outfitters and residents harvest, and when aboriginals harvest," Warner said. "You'd have to have a management plan that would manage all of them, you can't manage one of them amongst the three."

Like Andre, Warner wants to see some evidence of what caused 90,000 caribou to disappear in three short years.

"You're losing 30,000 caribou a year and that's not accounting for any caribou being born," Warner said. "If that was true, there should be some supporting evidence. We should be seeing dead caribou, diseased caribou or no caribou, but the evidence is exactly the opposite.

Warner said he has received reports of thousands upon thousands of caribou crossing the Bathurst Inlet heading east. The Ahiak herd is known to calve on the east side of the inlet. Both Warner and Andre have argued in the past that the Ahiak herd and Bathurst are the same, but the GNWT believes the two herds to be different.

Warner said he will speak to the resource board in January, where he hopes to put forth a plan to keep the outfitting industry going. He said he hopes to propose a plan where all the meat from their outfitting harvest can be given to communities.

"We use aboriginal guides and they take our hunters within a couple hundred yards - who cares who pulls the trigger at this point," Warner said.