The Indian Cree community of Waswanipi, Canada, 600km north of Montreal
is fighting to protect 13,000 square kilometers of forest north of their
village in the Broadback Valley from the logging industry that keeps
pushing its way further north.
Canada - Endangered woodland caribou
face increasing encroachment on their Canadian habitat, and
foot-dragging by the federal government to try to halt this advance
could now doom the species.
The cervidae, with its large snout and narrow antlers, called
reindeer in Eurasia, has seen colonists, and later forestry, mining and
oil and gas exploration companies carve out larger and larger swaths of
its vast habitat for human activities.
As a result, its numbers in Canada have fallen steadily over the past
150 years. In Quebec province, only pockets of caribou remain, largely
in the north.
This population nosedive led the federal government in June 2003 to
list the boreal woodland caribou as threatened, which requires the
environment minister to prepare a recovery strategy.
But that did not happen.
Frustrated by multi-year delays in sorting out how to save the
caribou and other species at risk, lawyers acting on behalf of five
environmental groups - the David Suzuki Foundation, Greenpeace Canada,
Sierra Club BC, Wilderness Committee and Wildsight - sued the
government.
Canada's diversified economy is still heavily supported by the
exploitation of its abundant natural resources, and the plaintiffs
accused Ottawa of delay tactics that benefited these industries.
The federal court agreed.
Source: Agencies
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