June 14, 2019 – A new BQCMB video is about more than highlighting the Board’s work to conserve barren-ground caribou for future generations – it is about ensuring that work carries on well into the future.
“With our current ten-year agreement expiring in less than three years, we are ramping up our efforts to inform our government partners, and others, that it is essential that this Board continue,” explains Ross Thompson, BQCMB Executive Director.
The Board needs to continue its work to help maintain the immensely valuable social, cultural, spiritual and economic relationship between the Beverly and Qamanirjuaq herds and current and future generations of Inuit, Dene and Metis people from two provinces and two territories.
The video shows many of the ways the BQCMB has addressed and supported caribou conservation since its creation in 1982. By providing funding for community-driven on-the-land mentoring of youth by elders, producing communication and education products about caribou issues, and advising governments and organizations about promoting the protection of caribou and important caribou habitats, the BQCMB uses its voice to ensure caribou people know they can make a difference to conserve caribou for the future.
BQCMB Chair Earl Evans cautions that losing access to caribou would be a cultural and economic shock to communities. “When there’s caribou, people are out there living their lifestyle that they always knew,” Evans explains. “The cultural value of the caribou to those people is of utmost importance, and we can’t overlook that.”
The video was produced with financial assistance from Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada.
