NIPIGON, Ont. - A peaceful protest for proposed caribou legislation caused traffic to slow across the Nipigon bridge this afternoon.
Roughly 50 protesters, rallied against the province’s Caribou Recovery Strategy.
“This is not against the conservation of caribou, this is against the changing of our forestry landscape,” said chief of the Red Rock Indian Band, Matthew Dupuis.
The province is planning to create what's called a “discontinuous zone” that slashes across most of Northwestern Ontario. This would allow safe passage from the shore of Lake Superior to the Far North.
The woodland caribou species is currently listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
Dupuis and fellow protesters were united in saying that caribou don’t inhabit the region. They couldn't tell that to the government because no consultation between First Nation communities and municipalities in the region took place.
“The caribou have not existed in this area for quite some time,” he said. “We felt the only way to start getting our voice heard is through peaceful demonstrations like this.”
According to the government of Ontario’s website, while the Nipigon region is populated by caribou further north, closer to the coast there have not been caribou sightings in many years.
Dupuis said this has been due to the economic development of the region through projects such as Trans-Canada Highway construction.
The government is trying to influence the migration patterns of caribou, but Dupuis says this will affect the region’s way of living.
Most notably, the control of other prey such as wolves and moose would be affected, as well as the decommissioning of roads.
Following through with the recovery strategies laid out by the government would result in restricted access of hunting, fishing, and harvesting, as well as a threat to the sustainability of the forestry industry.
Wendy Landry, mayor of Shuniah, says there’s been a “growing frustration” with the lack of consultation from the provincial government.
“When you start tapping into local knowledge from the area… we are the subject matter experts in Northwestern Ontario, and we haven’t been at the table at all,” she said.
“You can ask anybody on this bridge today… we haven’t seen Caribou in this area for hundreds of years. Our elders tell us that.”
Ontario Nature issued a press release Wednesday, urging for the protection of coastal caribou.
“It’s shocking to witness caribou virtually disappear from this area in my lifetime,” says Mirabai Alexander, who runs Ontario Nature’s Nature-based Tourism program. “Working for several summers supporting a tourism outfitter, I saw how caribou contribute to tourism in Northwestern Ontario.”
The Ministry of Environment was contacted for comment but did not respond.
Traffic was reduced to a single lane across the bridge for roughly two hours during the protest.
