SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Despite the dire state of the Bathurst herd, the territorial government is spending half as much money this year as it did last year on caribou conservation, according to the department of Environment and Natural Resources (ENR).

The department has allocated $500,000 from their 2010-2011 budget to caribou conversation, said Evan Walz, senior adviser to the deputy minister. He said the department will spend this money on a calf survival study for the Bathurst herd, as well as studies of the Bluenose East and Ahiak herds. For 2009-2010, ENR spent more than $1 million surveying the Bluenose West, Bluenose East, Ahiak, and Bathurst herds. In 2008-2009, Walz said they spent $880,000.

In the survey completed last year, they found the Bathurst caribou numbers had dropped at an alarming rate - to approximately 32,000 from 128,000 in 2006. Based on this information, the department instituted an emergency ban on hunting Bathurst caribou in an area twice the size of New Brunswick, outside of Yellowknife. The ban went into effect Jan. 1.

Between 1990 and 2009, survey frequencies ranged from every three to seven years. The GNWT's next planned survey is in 2012 but ENR deputy minister Gary Bohnet said he hadn't ruled out the possibility of conducting another population survey this year - they typically begin in June - and said the department would be prepared to seek supplementary funds to finance it.

Bohnet said ENR is focusing efforts on public and hunter education programs, "trying to get the message out that this is an issue of conservation," and long-term management plans. He said surveying the Bathurst herd costs a minimum $300,000 and said biologists recommend surveys every three years.

John Carter, CEO with the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, said the GNWT is too concerned about being wrong to invest in new research.

"It's so disingenuous," said Carter. "The government can always find money. Their message is 'we're not willing to spend any more money, because either we're proved right, or God forbid, we're proved wrong.' How embarrassing for the government would it be if they were to find there are 100,000 caribou?"

Carter echoed many of the hunting ban's critics when he said the GNWT's decision to impose the ban was based on "bad science and poor research."

He said aboriginal groups take issue with their methodology because the "definition of the Bathurst herd is a biologist definition. We see the caribou in the North as one big herd."

ENR, he added, should sit down with aboriginal groups to create a long-term management plan and incorporate critiques about the research into new studies, such as examining how the caribou may have been affected by forest fires.

"If they need to find $300 to $500,000, it's no big deal," said Carter.

Weledeh MLA Bob Bromley, who spent 16 years working as a biologist for the GNWT before entering politics, said a 2010 population survey could convince more people of the decline but said it would come with a steep price tag for information that might not be useful.

"When a herd gets this low, it can be very slow to recover, I wouldn't expect there to be huge leaps in numbers in that time (a year) but it could tell us if the situation had become more desperate," said Bromley. If a survey was undertaken, he added, it would be for political, not scientific reasons.

Bromley said rather than doing a survey this year, the GNWT should consider doing one in 2011, a year before their planned survey.

In the meantime, he said more effort should be put into exploring how factors beyond hunting - like the impact of climate change and industrial development of the diamond mines has had on the Bathurst herd.

"We're acting on hunting but I don't see anything to deal with the mineral industry," said Bromley. "There certainly could be other factors but we don't know."

The MLA said even if hunting were completely stopped, it is "absolutely possible" that caribou would continue to decline.

Although caribou have natural population shifts, Bohnet said hunting must be reduced to ensure the numbers are able to rebound in the future.

"Thirty years ago there were no ice roads to those communities, the climate was a lot different, the equipment being used was a lot different," said Bohnet. "The caribou are under pressures now that they never faced before."