Four years ago, the Canadian government promised to protect Canada's woodland caribou with a federal recovery strategy. But a new report from Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society shows that the Canadian government has been more interested in protecting the interests of big business (mining, gas, oil and logging) than addressing the real reason behind caribou decline -- habitat loss.
-- Most provinces and territories don't have the required protection plan needed by 2017, even though they've had four years.
-- The government of Ontario is too busy exempting extractive industries (e.g. logging) "from forest protection requirements under the provincial endangered species law."
-- The government of British Columbia is too busy giving the OK to “thousands of new hydraulic fracturing (or ‘fracking’) wells" in caribou habitat.
While the Canadian government, provinces and territories are too busy not making action plans to save the caribou and selling caribou habitat to big business, caribou numbers continue to drop (from hundreds of thousands to only 32,000 today).
Canada's endangered woodland caribou have occupied Canada's forests for thousands of years. Now their home is being sold -- the landscape is becoming too fragmented and changing too fast for the caribou to keep up. Sign and share this petition demanding that the Canadian government stop protecting the interests of big business and seriously start protecting the woodland caribou, like it promised four years ago.
Photo Credit: Darryl Darwent
