Save the caribou
The woodland caribou, a symbol of our country, considered sacred and a vital resource in many Indigenous communities, will be extinct by the end of the century if the current rate of population decline is allowed to continue.
Faced with this alarming fact, the federal government five years ago took action, asking every province to develop a plan to protect the animal. In particular, Ottawa called on provincial governments to do more to preserve the boreal forest, the caribou’s natural habitat. The causes of the animal’s extraordinary decline are many, including climate change and increased predation, but none is so salient as the boreal’s degradation by human activity.
Ottawa gave the provinces until Oct. 5 of this year to deliver. According to a new report from the federal government, not one met the deadline.
Ontario, in particular, has been a bad actor. In 2013, the province watered down its once-lauded Endangered Species Act, granting a series of ill-judged exemptions to industry. The most controversial allows someone to kill caribou or destroy its habitat if that person is engaged in a government-approved forestry operation.
This policy change was enacted in an effort to prop up the declining forestry sector, but the cost has been unacceptably high. Industrial logging and logging roads have continued to fragment the forest, making hunting easier for wolves and life more perilous for caribou.
Much of the habitat in question falls on provincial Crown lands, but the federal Species at Risk Act gives Ottawa the power to impose habitat protections unilaterally on the provinces. Given provincial recalcitrance and the urgency of the problem, the feds may have to do just that.
Of course, the impact on industry and jobs of greater habitat protection must be managed. But if we do nothing, the outcome is all but certain: some alive today will live to see a country without caribou.
That would be a terrible loss and sign of worse to come. The caribou no doubt holds a special place in the Canadian imagination and in the lives of Indigenous peoples, but those are not the only reasons it deserves particular attention. The animal is often called a boreal bellwether; the health or weakness of the caribou population is thought to be a good indication of the health or weakness of our most expansive forest and its diverse ecosystems.
In Canada, by virtue of our vast wilderness, rich wildlife, three oceans and enormous holdings of fresh water, we have a special responsibility to conserve. Yet recent reports suggest we are failing in this regard. It is not an exaggeration to say that, in this way, we are endangering our food and water, the health of our economy and the sustainability of our planet.
The noted American biologist E.O. Wilson once described the loss of biodiversity as “the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.” In depicting a caribou, the Canadian quarter today commemorates the richness of our wildlife and wilderness. If we aren’t careful, that symbol will sour into one of a shameful and irreversible failure.