Sunday, September 10, 2006

Manitoba's Conservation and Recovery Strategy for Boreal Woodland Caribou

was released on June 8, 2006. The document is accessible online. There’s not much to it. I recommend filing it in the Young Adult Fiction section of your library. Detailed comments and suggestions for consideration in future rewrites may be submitted to:

Dr. Vince Crichton
Wildlife and Ecosystem Protection Branch
Box 24 - 200 Saulteaux Crescent
Winnipeg MB R3J 3W3

Unfortunately, Vince Crichton has been known to say: "More moose, more deer in the area, we don't want to see that because it's going to mean more wolves in there,"

Crichton also said: "What we're looking at is larger clear-cuts that will not make the habitat come back into habitat types that are going to be attractive to moose and deer." The larger cuts would not affect the caribou population, he says, because it would involve mature habitat that the caribou are not using anymore. Crichton says it's not unusual [ = usual] for Manitoba Conservation to work closely with major logging companies.

So, the situation in Manitoba seems quite bleak, doesn't it? Manitoba Hydro, Tembec, and the like are making the decisions of our government. In fact, the people and land of Manitoba are being governed by industrialists who have no interest in conservation or the continued practice of either traditional or environmentally-friendly or rural livelihoods. They will destroy the Boreal Forest (and the communities who depend on the forest) if they are allowed to, and they are being allowed to. The question I am left asking of myself is, "What can I do about it!?"

What can I do when no legal avenue is effective? What can I do when the world, the environment around me, upon which we subsist, is being cut to ribbons, mined, poisoned, and erased?

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