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Aboriginals push back over hunting rules in the North
last update: Feb 08, 2010 02:12 PM
From a "Canadian Press / Google" article: Aboriginal hunters across the North of Canada are pushing back against attempts to conserve wildlife, launching court actions and legislative measures to stop the three territories from regulating the harvest of caribou and polar bears.
Bill Erasmus of the Dene Nation in Yellowknife, who faces legal action for hunting in defiance of a ban on taking caribou from the declining Bathurst herd in the central Arctic tundra, said "Aboriginal people are very aware of their rights. We may let other things slip, but when you go to the core of who we are, we determine there is a limit."
Northern Peoples are heavily dependend on game for food and as such the wildlife issues are among the most politically sensitive in the Arctic. A series of land claims and co-management agreements is supposed to give them control over animals on their own lands.
The three territorial governments of Nunavut, Northwest Territories and Yukon, on the advice of biologists, are trying to restrict hunting.
Meanwhile, while the Inuvialuit Game Council and the Gwich'In Tribal Council are taking Yukon to court, asking a judge to declare the territory has broken their land claims by not consulting them adequately, the N.W.T. legislature will consider a motion that calls on the government to rescind its controls on the Bathurst herd.
Norman Yakelaya, the legislative member from the area affected by the hunting ban who tabled the motion, said "It's about aboriginal rights for their means of survival and food. We jumped the gun on this. We should have waited to have aboriginal people deal with it."
World Wildlife Fund's Craig Stewart, the conservation organisation which supports both wildlife conservation and subsistence hunting, says the problems arise from different ways of looking at the natural world. "What seems to be behind it is a completely different view of what's normal," he said.
While aboriginals tend to view animal population changes as part of a cycle, scientists have grown increasingly alarmed at the size and speed of the declines. Stewart added that science lacks long-term historical data for many animals including caribou and polar bears. "Governments need to make the investments in science to a broad enough scale so we can close the gap," he said.
Read more:
The Canadian Press / Google, 7th February 2010
