Elders, trappers want bison protected
Some trappers and elders from Alberta's Little Red River Cree Nation are urging the province to protect a dwindling Wabasca Wood Buffalo herd.
In a letter to Environment Minister Jason Nixon, they ask for immediate action to end unregulated hunting by legally protecting the herd.
“Our Woodland Cree Trappers and Elders have seen the Wabasca Wood Buffalo herd plummet without suitable recovery management actions,” says the March 26 letter, which was signed by trappers Johnson Alook, Sylvester Auger and Lorne Tallcree. “We have not seen more than nine animals at a time of this herd this past season.”
A spokesman for Nixon said in a statement Friday that the province recognizes the importance of the Wabasca bison population to Indigenous peoples and other Albertans.
“The Wabasca bison population plays an important role in the conservation and recovery of wood bison in northern Alberta,” said the emailed statement from press secretary Paul Hamnett. “Currently the Wabasca bison population is at low levels and at risk of local extinction. At this time, the Wabasca bison population cannot sustain any level of harvesting.”
The statement said the province is looking at all potential measures and actions to conserve and recover the population.
The trappers said they have yet to receive a response from the province, but hope it will protect the herd before it disappears completely.
“When I started trapping, I used to see 40, 30 buffalo,” Alook said in an interview. “For a few years now, I haven't seen any buffalo.
“There's some buffalo out there, but I haven't seen them. I used to see them every time we'd go out there.”
Other trappers and elders noticed the same thing, he said, so they decided to form a group to express their concerns.
“We want to get them protected.”
The letter says the herd is culturally and ecologically important as one of the few disease-free, free-ranging Wood Buffalo herds in Canada. There are only two other healthy herds in Alberta — in Ronald Lake and Hay Zama — and both have protections that prohibit unregulated hunting.