Earth Equity News

Dwindling Caribou in Northwest Territories Incites Rebellion. By Patrick White, Toronto Globe and Mail, May 4, 2010. "Around Yellowknife, the political climate is so combustible, and the caribou so important, that loss of the animal can undermine the entire government... Once a marvel of natural perseverance, the herd that winters around Great Bear and Great Slave lakes is now a great natural mystery, declining at a unknown rate and for unknown reasons. Alarmingly low caribou counts recently prompted the Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT) to impose a hunting ban throughout the range of the Bathurst caribou, an area twice the size of New Brunswick. While the government argues that the drastic measure was necessary to save the species, the Yellowknives are taking the issue to the territorial Supreme Court later this month, contesting the government's authority over First Nations hunting and the challenging the government's very legitimacy… Between 2003 and 2009 alone, the population had plummeted from 128,000 to 32,000. Government biologists estimated the herd would disappear within five years. It is the same sad fate that has, to some degree, befallen nearly every caribou species worldwide in recent years."