Thank you, Mr. Speaker. ENR has been engaged with Nunavut on issues of protection of caribou during calving and post-calving. GNWT and ENR is a registered participant in the Nunavut Planning Commission process for developing a Nunavut Land Use Plan. During the technical meetings up this point, the GNWT has put forward the position that in this industrial activity of any type including mineral exploration, production, construction of roads, pipelines, and other infrastructure should not be permitted on the calving areas. ENR staff participated in NPC technical meeting specifically on the subject of protection of caribou habitat in Nunavut including calving and post-calving ranges. The progress of the meetings was to build consensus on approaches for habitat and disturbance management through the combination of tools such as conservation areas as well as seasonal and locational restrictions on development activities. With respect to monitoring and landscape changes ENR has a number of initiatives underway to track and report on the status of Barren-ground caribou ranges in the NWT.

Since 2013, the NWT Cumulative Impact Monitoring Program and partners have developed a series of validated anthropogenic disturbance footprints for the different administrative regions for the NWT. These data sets will be updated twice a year to ensure the data remain current. The NWT State of the Environment Report reports on human activity and landscape disturbances on an annual basis by Echo Zone. The GNWT monitors all land use permits submitted on the ranges of the Barren-land caribou including within the Nunavut and provides expert comments and recommendations on all permits that may be negatively impacted caribou habitat especially with respect to sensitive habitat such as calving and post-calving grounds. ENR and Forest Management Division delineates the areas of forest impact by fire on an annual basis across the Northwest Territories.

This information is publicly available on ENR's data warehouse, ENR has contracted out to summarize the environmental trends from 1979 to 2014 for NWT Barren-ground caribou herds with the interpretation of herd specific trends and their implications on each herd. ENR expects those results this year and will make them available to interested parties as soon as possible as a report is available.