SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Michael Miltenberger says harvesting agreements will give caribou in the Bathurst herd breathing space to hopefully recover.

Miltenberger, the minister of Environment and Natural Resources (ENR), said harvest from the Bathurst herd has historically been 7,000 to 10,000 animals annually.

However, that dropped to about 300 last year and will stay at that level under a two-year agreement signed Oct. 8 with the Yellowknives Dene First Nation and a three-year agreement likely to be finalized with the Tlicho Government.

"So instead of taking out 21,000 or 30,000 animals, we are only going to take out less than a thousand (over the next three years)," Miltenberger said. "I think everybody's commonsense math will tell us that will take enormous pressure off the herd. It will give them breathing space, a chance to let their birth rates rise and numbers increase."

A 2009 population survey identified only 32,000 animals in the herd, down from 120,000 just three years earlier.

On Oct. 8, the Wek'eezhii Renewable Resources Board (WRRB) released a report on harvesting animals from the Bathurst herd consistent with a joint proposal submitted earlier by the GNWT and the Tlicho Government.

The board would like to see its recommendations put into effect no later than Jan. 1, 2011. Until then, it recommends ENR's emergency measures - an interim ban on hunting established on Jan. 1, 2010 - remain in effect.

"So it moves us forward," Miltenberger said of the board's report. "It reaffirms the acceptance and recognition that there is an issue here and I think the process itself has shown that we can work out very difficult issues if there is enough leadership and goodwill, and focus on protecting the caribou. Ultimately this is a good news story for the caribou."

The signed agreement and the joint proposal both call for a harvesting target of 300 animals per year from the Bathurst herd, meaning 150 for the Yellowknives agreement and 150 for a Tlicho agreement.

No comment could be obtained from a spokesperson for the Tlicho Government.

Miltenberger said the harvesting targets will be enforced.

"We'll probably supplement some of the monitoring capacity. We'll work with the communities, the hunters. We'll have check stops," he said, adding the targets and the agreements will be collectively managed.

In its report, the WRRB recommended commercial, outfitted and resident harvesting from the Bathurst herd in the Wek'eezhii region be set to zero for the next three years.

While noting the first issue is preservation of the herd, Miltenberger said there continues to be a definite impact on outfitters.

"There's no outfitting commercial harvest anywhere in the Northwest Territories now for any of the herds given the stress and pressure that they're under," he said. "So the North Slave is sort of the final region to come to grips with that reality with the changes to numbers in the various herds."

Gary Jaeb, a long-time outfitter in Yellowknife, said this is the first fall in 27 years that his operation won't hunt caribou, and his two lodges are now up for sale.

Jaeb said his and other outfitting businesses were killed by the Jan. 1 caribou hunting ban announced by the GNWT.

Neither of the GNWT's arrangements with the Tlicho and Yellowknives offers anything for outfitters.

"It's very disappointing to say the least," Jaeb said.

His operation's quota had been reduced to 75 tags last year and the year before, and this year was shut down completely.

"We were still viable with 75 caribou tags," he said.

Jaeb doesn't believe the problem with the caribou is a conservation issue.

"It's the migrations that have changed," he said, predicting the caribou will come back. "I don't think they're gone."

However, Jaeb doesn't think the caribou outfitting industry will return. "It's really naive to think that you can just shut it down for a couple of years and then turn it back on."

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