YELLOWKNIFE - Shrinking caribou herds in the Northwest Territories will cost the Dene effort and money as they lose tourism dollars and scramble to replace a vital food source.

But with all aboriginal governments in the N.W.T. now at least considering once-unthinkable hunting quotas, the greatest loss may be the old, intimate bond between a people and the resource that dominates both their diet and their culture.

"The caribou are our neighbours," said Fred Sangris, who leads the caribou committee of the Dene Nation.

"They are considered to be family. The Dene look after the caribou and the caribou look after the Dene. It's been like that for thousands of years. There's a great respect on both sides."

Recent surveys suggest two of the North's major caribou herds - the Beverly and the Bathurst - are declining at a rate scientists compare to the collapse of Newfoundland's once-mighty cod stocks. The response will also sound familiar to Newfoundlanders: quotas. And, in some cases, outright bans.

The Tlicho government, which manages a huge swath of tundra between Great Slave and Great Bear lakes, is considering quotas on how many caribou hunters can bag.

"It's gotten to the point where it's very serious," said Alfonz Nitsiza, head of that government's Wek'eezh"i Renewable Resources Board. "Action has to be taken."

The Inuvialuit in the N.W.T.'s far northern corner implemented restrictions in 2006, including a moratorium on hunting one herd. The Gwich'In to their south brought in quotas shortly after.

South of them, the Sahtu Renewable Resources Board is in the final stages of implementing its first tag system.

The quotas are tight.

The Sahtu communities of Colville Lake, Fort Good Hope and Norman Wells took an average of 634 caribou a year between 1999 and 2005. That harvest will be nearly halved to 350 - real hardship in a society where caribou is often on the table three or four times weekly.

"The way the economy is in this area, a lot of people depend on caribou for their food because they're unable to purchase what they need at the store," said Robert Charlie of the Gwich'In Renewable Resources Board.

The quotas create real economic losses as well. Along with them come sport hunting bans that shut down a lucrative industry in communities with few other resources.

Joyce Rabesca, co-owner of an outfitting camp north of Yellowknife, closed her operation after this summer's caribou surveys.

Sport hunters once paid $6,200 a week to hunt with her guides. At the camp's peak, she hired 11 local guides who earned up to $10,000 each.

"It gave them opportunities to show what they could do and there aren't very many opportunities to do that in this society," Rabesca said.

But the Dene are willing to live with a little less cash and can stock their larders with moose, fish and geese. Their real objections to quotas may be cultural.

Many traditional Dene believe that animals offer themselves to hunters who are skilled and respectful enough to take them, and that the honourable death of one caribou calls up its replacement.

"The land is a living thing," Wilfred Kochon, an elder from Colville Lake, said at 2007 hearings into hunting quotas. "If you don't use the land, it's not alive. The caribou knows that."

Quotas interfere with that relationship. "Managing" a wild animal restricts it in some sense and that goes deeply against the Dene grain.

"We think that we are the boss of the animals," said elder Jim Pierrot at the same hearing. "No. We're not the boss of it."

Still, there may be no other way. Modern gear, paid for by modern jobs in diamond mines or drilling rigs, makes hunting easier than it's ever been.

"We have a lot of people employed in the mine, so they bought some heavier or faster snowmobiles and there's high-powered rifles and there's winter road access regularly available," said Nitsiza. "I don't think people have done anything to slow down the practice of hunting."

The wage economy may have eroded some of the old respect, too.

"We hear stories about people taking more than they need," acknowledged Charlie.

All else aside, the strongest argument for quotas are signs that they may be working.

The Cape Bathurst herd, which hasn't been hunted since 2006, shows early signs of stabilizing - although it's holding steady at about 1,800 instead of its former 20,000. The Bluenose West herd is also stabilizing at about 18,000 animals, about 10 per cent of its peak.

Even the elders are starting to think that the old ways are no longer enough and that quotas are worth the cost.

"People are coming around," said Nitsiza. "Elders are thinking we need to do something right away if the caribou is going to survive."

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