Inuvik (Mar 20/06) - The territorial government has acted upon recommendations from a wildlife board to close all hunting except for aboriginal subsistence harvesters in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region.

Brandon Walk with a central-Barrenground caribou near Pellet lake. A recent halt to all hunting except for aboriginal subsistence harvesting in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region has outfitters in other areas of the NWT wondering what will happen to their hunting season come next fall after the GWNT conducts a more comprehensive count of caribou populations. - photo courtesy of Adventure Northwest

Non-aboriginal, non-resident, and commercial hunting caribou seasons were closed, March 15.

The recommendations were made by the Wildlife Management Advisory Council (WMAC) and submitted to the GNWT late last year.

"They are a co-management board and they do make recommendations for regulatory changes on all wildlife," said Judy McLinton, an Environment and Natural Resources spokesperson (ENR).

The closure is an interim measure outlined in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources caribou management strategy, said McLinton.

"The decision is premature," said Chuck Gruben, owner and operator of Chuck Gruben's Guiding and Outfitting in Tuktoyaktuk.

"If all the caribou populations are in decline, then why shut down just one management zone."

Gruben said if there is truth to the caribou numbers, then the chairs of the Inuvialuit Game Council and Wildlife Management Advisory Council should speak up.

"The chairs should speak out, then people will take it seriously."

Larry Carpenter, WMAC chair, said anything that can be done to slow down the decline is beneficial at this point.

"This is a serious problem," Carpenter said. "That's why we made the recommendations to the minister. For people around here, caribou is their number one food source."

Carpenter said the herds in question, the Cape Bathurst and Bluenose-West herds, are historically smaller in comparison to herds like the Bathurst or Porcupine caribou herds. "The larger the herd, the faster they will recover," said Katherine Thiesenhausen, WMAC resource biologist.

"One of the comments from a community tour of the Inuvialuit Settlement Region conducted in the fall of 2005 by WMAC and ENR, was that all barren-ground caribou are one herd. But for management purposes we manage them as separate herds based on calving ranges to target management actions to the specific herds."

This summer biologists with the GNWT will perform the most accurate caribou photo census to date.

Boyd Warner, president of the Barrenground Caribou Outfitters Association, said any photo census must count Bathurst Caribou herds calving on both the east and west side of Bathurst Inlet.

"The 2005 population estimates did not factor all the caribou that are calving near Bathurst Inlet," Warner wrote in a letter to Michael Miltenberger, ENR minster.