Deline chief says hunters should harvest caribou like ancestors

​The chief of Deline says hunters should harvest the same way their ancestors did if they want to protect caribou.

Leaders from across the North met in Deline last week to discuss the future of the Bluenose East caribou herd.

The herd is not declining as rapidly as the Bathurst herd. But the Bluenose East harvest has been limited to 1,800 caribou. Eighty per cent of those animals must be bulls. How the allocation will be split up between aboriginal groups hasn't yet been decided. 

Deline chief Leonard Kenny says hunters should still try to reduce pressure on the herd.

“Today you can go out a couple hundred miles in one day on a big snow machine and you can take 10 caribou really easily and then be home the same day. In the past, you couldn't do that. It would take two weeks to come home and you'd take only three or four caribou in your sled. That's the difference.”

Kenny says young hunters should be educated about using as many parts of the caribou as possible.

Deborah Simmons, executive director of the Sahtu Renewable Resources Board, says Kenny's ideas were warmly received.

“There's a strong understanding of the value of regional and location conservation,” she said.

But Simmons says that number of Bluenose East caribou that may be revisited after the territorial government does a photographic survey of the herd this spring.