What we have learned as part of the decline in 1986, 460,000 animals, down to today about 15,000 for the Bathurst, during the prime hunting times a number of years ago, about 15,000 animals, mainly cows, were taken out of the herd. What we have learned since then

– as the Member has indicated, no

hunting for the last probably four or five years now – is that there are other contributing factors. They all combine together. There are access roads, cumulative impact, rising temperatures and things like in the last two years we’ve burnt four million hectares of forest.

With the pressures on the herd, the stressors, it takes a long time to turn around a decline that precipitous and we are still struggling with every herd in the Northwest Territories with probably the exception of the two to the east and the west, the Porcupine and the Beverly Ahiak. It is one of many factors. There are others like predation, climate change, as I indicated, and those other types of things, but there is still a need to control the harvest because, as the Member has indicated, the population drop has been precipitous. Thank you.