Not one, not two, but three provincial cabinet ministers announced a five year ban on hunting George River caribou on Monday.
This is a very serious situation, they said.
It must be serious. They had very glum faces.
If people don’t stop killing caribou, then bad things will happen, they said.
Justice minister @King_Darin said law enforcement officials were around and well…you know what that could mean.
Uh huh.
Every year for as long as most people can remember in Newfoundland and Labrador, the story is much the same: one or a bunch of provincial cabinet ministers get agitated about the state of one or another of the Labrador caribou herds.
They vow to do something.
Hunters – typically Innu hunters – kill caribou.
Nothing else happens that year.
Rinse.
Repeat.
SRBP has told you about this before:
- There’s a 1987 version,
- a string of more recent examples,
- including one from 2009, and,
- “The politics of the caribou”.
So what’s going on this year more so than other years?
Good question.
One thing for sure, it isn’t about the dramatic decline in the herd since 2010. In 2012, a different brace of ministers announced that the George River herd had dropped from 74,000 to 27,000 or so in a couple of years.
They did absolutely nothing in 2012 except keep an eye on things and issue eight news releases about caribou hunting.
-srbp-