Caribou In the Canadian North
Native peoples of the Canadian north have hunted barren plains caribou since long before the Europeans arrived in North America. Hunters and social groups relied heavily on the caribou for food, clothing and utensils, as well as a source of culture and spiritual beliefs. When caribou populations declined or migrated, indigenous peoples were forced to either move with the herd, or suffer from severe starvation. Today, the fur trade still takes place in the Canadian north, with roughly 100,000 people in total participating in Canada. Animals, such as the caribou, provide one of the few sources of income available to the natives in some regions, and the natural resources they provide are used to purchase food-stuffs, ammunition, and equipment from the south. The Indian, Inuit, and Dene ethnic groups in Canada all still rely on the caribou as a source of food, despite the fact that native cultures have changed as indigenous peoples have adapted parts of their lifestyle to the new technological advances . The introduction of rifles and snowmobiles into the northern economy have changed hunting and trapping methods, and native people are being forced to continually redefine their own culture as technology filters
into the north. There is therefore an increasing need for native people to choose the way in which they interact with southern society, and the blending of traditional skills and modern technology to utilize resources seems to be the most common approach to this problem. Today, as the resource development industry has moved rapidly into the north, the importance of managing the valuable caribou herd resources in the face of man-made destruction has become more emphasized. This view of trying to manage the populations of caribou is shared by both native and non-native managing agencies. The population numbers of caribou herds fluctuate significantly over various years, according to biologists, with constant modifications in the size of their ranges. These periodical contractions and expansions of the caribou populations appears to be running on some sort of cycle, making the monitoring of caribou populations all the more difficult. Stable, artificially-produced population numbers held for purposes of commercial and subsistence hunting would therefore not mimic the natural caribou population condition, resulting in detrimental effects to their lifecycle as well as disruptions to the surrounding ecosystems of predators, such as wolves .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Life Cycle, Inuit Dene, Caribou Populations, Canada Canadian, Bering Sea, Gordan Haber, Management Policies, Midwest Joint, Beverly Quamanirjuaq, Parliament Cabinet, caribou populations, barren-ground caribou, caribou herds, caribou herd, porcupine caribou, canadian north, porcupine caribou herd, sustained yield, renewable resource, caribou management, caribou meat, barren plains caribou, beverly quamanirjuaq caribou, oil gas pipelines, northern regions canada,
Approximate Word count = 3449
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
