I attended the Caribou Recovery town hall meeting at the Civic Centre on Tuesday evening and I was pleasantly surprised at the turnout. The government panel didn't appear to be as pleased.
I was disappointed nothing new was offered by the government panel on caribou recovery, but the audience had plenty to say about the government plan to shutdown another huge portion of B.C.
There was a couple of peculiar statements from the government panel that went unchallenged, probably because so many people at the meeting wanted to speak to other concerns and there were plenty.
One panel statement was the often repeated idea that caribou are displaced from their habitat by snowmobiles. This old wives tale was been debunked so many times, and proven false by so much data and observations, that I am surprised this new panel is still spouting the same old fairy tale. Some of the most intensely used snowmobile areas in B.C. continue to have caribou in their areas. Wells, Revelstoke and Torpy areas are obvious examples and other snowmobile clubs continue have to close their riding areas when the caribou wander back into the designated snowmobile area. I have to wonder what the real agenda of the panel is? Clearly the panel has no credibility when they have to resort to untruths and are unaware of the facts.
The other annoying bit of weirdness that was spouted off by the panel was that the Moberly people had managed to increase their local caribou herd at enormous cost, from 16 animals to 81 animals in the space of five years by using maternal penning to raise caribou calves.
I could almost hear the calculators in the room suddenly multiplying 16 x 5 to get only 80 animals. Hey wait a minute! How many of the original 16 caribou were bulls needed to get the cows pregnant? And did every cow have a calf every year? At the 70 per cent survival rate stated for calves, the numbers get even worse. At a constant five bulls, and no adult mortality over 5 years, and every cow reproducing at two years old, the numbers still fall way short of 81 caribou. So where did the rest of the Moberly caribou come from? Why isn't the government asking questions when the numbers and facts obviously don't add up?
This government is clearly is on their own mission to close down huge portions of B.C. and nothing is going to stop this government. Not truth, facts, or even arithmetic will derail their mission, and that was the message delivered to the people of northern B.C. The government was only here to dance on the caribou graveyard.
Lee Sexsmith
Prince George
