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| Canada Goose |
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| Canada Goose |
While many would decry the North American Free Trade Agreement, many more would agree that managing North America's waterfowl and protecting their habitat requires cooperative planning and decision-making between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. Considerable progress has been made toward this goal; underpinned by treaties and agreements to conserve migratory birds through managed hunting and the protection of breeding, staging and nesting grounds.
Two initiatives have been particularly important. First, the 1916 Migratory Birds Convention between Canada and the U.S. and their respective national legislation to conserve and manage the harvest of ducks and geese and other game birds and to protect migratory non-game birds. This long-standing convention is now buttressed by a second initiative, the 1986 North American Waterfowl Management Plan, that puts in place an ambitious 15-year programme to achieve a net gain in wetlands and associated upland habitat across the continent.
Northern Canada has significant interests in these matters. The Migratory Birds Convention establishes an annual season closed for hunting -- March 10 to September 1. This closed season effectively prevents aboriginal people and other residents of northern Canada from legally harvesting migratory birds, which are to be found in the North only during the short spring and summer seasons. The convention also prohibits harvesting of murres -- a non-game bird species -- in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Large areas in the Northwest Territories were set aside in the 1950s and 1960s as sanctuaries to protect migratory birds during nesting and rearing. Clearly, northern Canada is playing its part to conserve migratory birds and their habitat, for the benefit of all.
But the inequity of current arrangements, particularly with respect to hunting by aboriginal peoples, has long been recognized. Proposals to amend the convention to accommodate the ongoing and traditional spring harvest of waterfowl by aboriginal people throughout Canada have attracted considerable public attention. In the 1975 James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement-the first of the modern treaties between aboriginal people and the Canadian state-the federal government committed to seek an amendment to the convention. A similar promise was made in the 1984 Final Agreement between the Inuvialuit of the Beaufort Sea region and the federal government.
This issue of Northern Perspectives deals
with proposed amendments to the Migratory
Birds Convention, and
the adoption of cooperative wildlife management regimes. Canada
IS party to internatlonal agreements to conserve caribou,
polar bear, and other species. By and large, these agreements
work well. There is every reason to hope and to expect that
the Migratory Birds Convention can and will be amended to
deal with harvesting by aboriginal people, and to legalize the
murre hunt in Newfoundland and Labrador. Amendments to
the convention to provide for this should not only aim to
conserve birds and to manage hunting, but should
acknowledge the need for and role of cooperative management
between governments and harvesters.
