The gist of the Animal Alliance of Canada message is that Northerners are killing too many wolves, and inhumanely at that.

Not so, according to Wildlife Minister Stephen Kakfwi.

Thanks to the presence of 700,000 caribou, "there is an unusually high concentration of wolves at this time," Kakfwi said of the Rennie Lake area, from where high levels of pelts have recently been extracted.

"There are two caribou herds converging in the area from the Beverly and Bathurst herds," Kakfwi.

Other areas of the NWT are reporting normal wolf harvest and population levels.

Conservation officers in Saskatchewan report doing paperwork for the export of 460 wolves captured and skinned by Saskatchewan trappers working the Rennie Lake area, just across the border in the NWT.

The visiting trappers wear the wolves out through a long snowmobile chase before shooting them.

Shelly Hawley-Yan, who runs the wolf protection campaign for the Animal Alliance of Canada in Toronto, said the GNWT should outlaw the killing of animals from snowmobiles, as was done in Yukon in 1982.

"What we have here is (a) systematic and efficient killing system in which wolves simply have no chance," she said.

While Kakfwi said he doesn't approve of long snowmobile chases before killing animals, he said the practice will remains legal.

"There is much more wide open country here than in the Yukon," he said.

The annual wolf kill in the NWT ranges from 900 to 1,200 animals, and there is no evidence so far to believe the final number will be any different this year, he added.

Kakfwi said though no study has reliably tallied the NWT wolf population, if any southerners want to train surveyors and finance the "tremendously expensive" proposition, he would be extremely happy to entertain the proposal.

"We're serious about managing wildlife," Kakfwi said.