A pair of local First Nations are rejecting Ontario's plan to manage a threatened caribou herd.
Michipicoten First Nation and Biigtigong Nishnaabeg have issued a joint release calling on the provincial government to withdraw a controversial effort to contract-out development of a plan for the management of the last caribou in the Lake Superior Caribou Range, the southernmost extent of woodland caribou in Canada.
They say "at a time when recognition of First Nations' importance in ecological stewardship is being increasingly recognized around the world...Ontario is going in the opposite direction", snubbing the First Nations' expertise and conservation ethics in the effort to contract out development of the management plan - even though the First Nations already have a strategy to restore caribou to their traditional lands around Lake Superior, as the population's dwindled over the last several decades so that roughly 60 now inhabit only two offshore islands in the lake, a problem they blame on "the province's indifference to their fate, which enabled significant habitat disruptions leading to an ecological cascade of detrimental impacts", pointing to "forestry, access development, and other intrusions that clear the forest" destroying the caribou's preferred habitat or replacing it with that the preferred habitat for moose, noting caribou are also "caught in the cross-fire" as wolves and other predators prey on growing numbers of moose.
The First Nations are calling on the provincial government to withdraw the request for bids for consultants, and instead work with the First Nations to save the caribou herd.