Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member is indicating that we have a plan. I think we should be very clear that the Bathurst Caribou Management Planning Committee has a plan with some recommendations. The membership again, besides government, Dogrib Treaty 11, Yellowknives Dene, North Slave Metis, Lutselk'e Dene, Kitikmeot Inuit, Kitikmeot HTA, Nunavut Wildlife Management Board, and NTI. These are the groups that combine their general knowledge, keeping in mind their mandate for management of the herd, to make these recommendations. I don't want to dismiss what they've done and shelve it or throw it away because anecdotally other people are saying that there are more caribou than we ever know what to do with and are further suggesting that if we can't count every caribou in the North then we'd better not even be talking about a management regime. I think that doesn't make any sense.
We do have management plans for other herds. We were through this yesterday, but I can go through it again. The Beverly and Qamanirjuaq Caribou Management Plan was prepared by those two caribou management boards. There's a management plan developed for Cape Bathurst, Bluenose West and Bluenose East herds. In 1998 that plan was accepted as general direction by the YMAC, by the Gwich'in Renewable Resource Board, the Sahtu Renewable Resource Board, Nunavut Wildlife Management Board. There are plans underway to determine the current status of those herds and update these plans in summer of 2005. I will acknowledge that there hasn't been a management plan yet drafted for the Ahiak herd, but this is a difficult task.
If the Member is insisting that we have counted every single animal in the Northwest Territories before we start to acknowledge that potentially there may be a problem, I don't think that makes sense. The 400,000 to 180,000 herd strength numbers, as the Member has indicated, would raise alarm bells unless that's a fluctuation that's been going on over time for centuries. We don't know that at this point. We're trying to work with people who live and have lived in this area for a long time, to assess that traditional knowledge and better understand the strength of the herd. So before we're able to do that, I don't think we can jump to any conclusions that would be well founded. So we're undertaking that activity.
I guess what I'm saying, Mr. Chairman, is there's a lot of work that needs to be done here. We think it's important work. We think it's worth funding and that's why we're proposing to come forward and are asking the Members to approve $275,000 for additional Bathurst caribou monitoring. We wouldn't be doing that if we thought we had all the answers and we're just going to impose some restrictions on a certain range of hunters and start restricting tags. We have no plans to do that at this point. I'm not really sure where the alarm bells are ringing. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.