Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The temporary measures put in place by our government until such time as the Wekeezhii board puts a long-term plan in place has raised a lot of discussion across the Territories, in my communities and with the residents that I represent, because we also harvest from this herd. Most of the communities in my riding, the chief and others, will make an organized hunt and come and harvest from this herd in the Tlicho area, as I did along with other friends for many years. Of course, it is a shock. I mean, it’s a shock that I think some of us have recognized for some time, that the herd has depleted down to a mere 32,000 animals. It’s also a shock for all of us that we, as aboriginal people, will
not be able to hunt; something that we’ve done for many, many years.
I think it’s time, there’s still time and there’s still opportunity for us to learn, to educate ourselves on how to save the caribou herds and also to look at other jurisdictions, Mr. Speaker, because worldwide, caribou has been a conservation mystery to scholars, to hunters, to the scientists and nearly every population of caribou has a volatile and a very storied history and have been prone to endangerment due to wide fluctuations in their populations. Many of the caribou populations around the globe have, to date, run to extinction. The Dawson caribou subspecies, for example, of the Queen Charlotte Islands, became extinct around the time of the signing of the Treaty 11. Speculation of this herd that became extinct includes a number of things including habitat disruption, disease and, of course, over hunting. Habitat was destroyed due to uncontrolled logging practices, many new diseases were introduced to that herd as a result of bringing deer from the mainland and over hunting by the island residents that were in the area. The Peary caribou, a herd a little closer to us, the subspecies in the High Arctic, went from 40,000 animals in 1961 to a low of 700 in 2009.
Mr. Speaker, the Government of Nunavut proposed an intensive Baffin Island study after research in 2008 and 2009 showed that there was only 170 caribou that were counted in the area spanning roughly 80,000 kilometres. With a growing population of 30,000-plus in Nunavut, I would ask how many families can they expect to feed on the low population of caribou in that area. In order to do that, for some families that traditionally hunt caribou, others would have to go without. So who would decide who gets to exercise the right to hunt, and traditionally hunt, and who would also decide who doesn’t? It’s an impossible question to answer, I would think, since the primary contribution causes of reduced numbers are thought to be over hunting and climate change. I think common sense would dictate that drastic measures have to be taken to ensure that the herd survives.
In Alberta the herd native to the mountains they populate now require protection within the range that they live, or habitat, the Caribou Mountains. In the Caribou Mountains of British Columbia there are very rare sightings, if any at all. It’s ironic, because this is an area that was named for the abundance of this animal. Caribou used to habitat the regions as far south as Washington State, Idaho and even New England, but now they’re only represented there in the names of lakes, parks and summer camps.
Around the globe there are a number of factors that have reduced and made extinct caribou populations, mostly in combination with adverse
impacts from over hunting, habitat destruction, overgrazing, disease and starvation. For some of the factors there is no easy solution, such as starvation and disease. There is no means of control. So governments have to choose how they can control factors that are achievable, and that’s the behaviour of humans. Most jurisdictions recognize that the humans’ right is second to the animals’ preservation and conservation and only happens when the animals’ existence is ensured and measurable growth is observed.
In another part of the country in recent history, Greenland saw a dramatic drop in caribou herd populations from 40,000 in 1961 to a mere 9,000 in 1993, and suspended hunting for the time from 1993 to 1995. The subsistence users and hunters really had a heated debate over the hunt. What the ban achieved at that time was reduced pressure and also gave the people from that area the ability to do a more focused effort to study the barren land caribou population. In the end, the studies that followed showed the herd to be healthier than they had originally anticipated and the government-of-the-day stated that the ban on hunting could be lifted sooner. But hindsight is 20/20, of course, and when members of the Greenland government looked back in time they always can say that they acted appropriately and responsibly and the best interests of the herd was on their conscience.
Mr. Speaker, desperate times call for desperate measures. Normally, an ethical government shouldn’t deprive its citizens of rights they normally enjoy unless the suspension of those rights stand to benefit all of its citizens by protecting the very subject of the very rights that they now enjoy. We need to ask ourselves: do we act on the side of caution and allow this herd to recover unmolested, or forever manage them at the margin of their existence?
There’s a lesson to be learned from other resources in Canada that collapsed because of government, because of industry and because citizens failed to act. One can draw a parallel between the caribou and the Atlantic cod fishery. In the early 1990s, Canadians watched as the northern cod fishing stocks collapsed due to a...(inaudible)...of just 1,700 tonnes in a fishery that yielded millions of tonnes of fish every year for centuries. The very people that protested the conservation measures proposed by the government, based on their rights to maintain their livelihood, are now destitute because the government upheld human rights and neglected to protect the resource. Needless to say, the stock has, to this day, not recovered.
Historically, it always has been a government policy to err on the side of caution. Where it hasn’t and where caution is thrown to the wind, tragedies ensue. Over its short history and with the assistance of aboriginal people, not to the exclusion
of them, the GNWT has managed several wild resources back from the threshold or at least very near extinction. Among them are wood bison, muskox and polar bear. All of these successes were due to restrictions on hunting. It wasn’t the lack of involvement, but the dedicated cooperation of aboriginal and non-aboriginal of the NWT alike that allowed for these success stories to happen. Once more, the Government of the Northwest Territories is asking all its citizens to support and cooperate with these emergency measures to allow for the expeditious recovery of the Bathurst caribou herd. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.