With the ice beginning to form on local lakes, local hunters began preparing for an annual hunt of caribou that takes between 8,000 and 10,000 animals. Then Environment Minister J. Michael Miltenberger received some shocking numbers: For every 15 Bathurst caribou counted in 1986, there was one in 2009.I guess the Inuit don't have a word for irony.
Between 2003 and 2009 alone, the population had plummeted from 128,000 to 32,000.
Government biologists estimated the herd would disappear within five years.
Or conservation.
