Environment committee  Good morning.

Environment committee  Bonjour, messieurs et mesdames. Thank you very much for having us this morning. The New Brunswick Wildlife Federation was formed in 1924 to address a drastic decrease in big game populations. Our founding fathers understood the North American conservation model concept to be the

Environment committee  Thank you, Mr. Sopuck. I'm going to say that I know very little about trapping; that is not in my domain. Today I represent a group of 25 organizations around the province, so we couldn't bring in an individual for every aspect of hunting and trapping, but I do know there's been

Environment committee  Yes, sir, very much so. If we don't have habitat, there will not be healthy populations of animals. It's hard to monitor the impact of the changes made to the Fisheries Act or other regulations lately because we have yet to see the charges that anybody has laid. The province find

Environment committee  We do have windmills. We have large windmill industries that some of our members will say have disrupted animals. We have large clear-cuts that have forced migrations of deer herds to private forest, where they don't have the habitat. Now the province is cutting old growth forest

Environment committee  I can't add any more value than what Tony has said. He reflects, probably, the voice of all hunters in our province as well.

Environment committee  Trapping, as I said.... They can only harvest excess animals in a herd, so by default if they have a successful trapping season, you'd have to assume that the herd is healthy and has reached its carrying capacity. They do not allow an overpopulation, which actually will cause sic

Environment committee  As hunters, we go out in the forest. We are not a bunch of moronic people who just go there to kill animals, or to make animals suffer. We understand nature. It's not about just killing and hunting. We go there, walk in the woods, and I find the hunters who are out there feel it,

Environment committee  Yes. I would reflect Tony on the seal issue. In Minister Aglukkaq, we're very fortunate to have a minister who understands the importance of wild game meat to her culture and who takes on the fight of supporting hunting. I guess one thing we would like to see through Canada—and

Environment committee  I will answer you in French. Is that okay?

Environment committee  Throughout the province, some of our people are involved in projects. Some projects are under way. I'll have to do it in English because the translation is distracting me, okay? I'm very sorry. On what we're doing to enhance, we have environmental projects that are done by our

Environment committee  We're always asked to participate and have our comments on species at risk. The only one that I've been involved with would be salmon-related, not hunting-related, because they want to list the Atlantic salmon. I've had some input into that. In terms of other species and our spec

Environment committee  Climate change is a very complex issue to get into. I have members who would say we're not affecting the climate. Personally I believe that we as humans are a cause of it. What can we do? We could try to minimize our impact in the sense of making better choices. A lot of my memb

Environment committee  We will definitely see some changes. We already see changes with migrations of species to other areas of the province. We've had a lot of flooding in our province lately, and we've seen some very fast increases of rivers. So on climate change, it's warm. We get flooding—and not a

Environment committee  It's the same thing in New Brunswick. We do participate. You can turn in jawbones. We don't have a program where everybody turns in the jawbone, but those who want to, do. During hunting season the department of natural resources will put bio stations around the province, where t