Environment committee  I think the biggest impact for us came from the changes in the EU and the requirement for humane trapping methods. That was a big expense. All of our trappers are now using humane traps. That meant a complete shift for people in how they carried out their trapping. Other than th

Environment committee  Thank you for that question. The change in the minimum age was driven by the desire of both outfitters and resident hunters to take their children hunting at an earlier age. The minimum age to get a hunting licence in the territories is now 12. You need to have parental consent

Environment committee  I just wanted to make a similar comment, from a Canadian perspective. There's been a lot of talk about climate change. I mentioned that habitat loss wasn't as big an issue for us here, but that's only because we've been lucky so far. People only care about things they know, and i

Environment committee  It varies by species. Every year we set up a research and monitoring program for the year, depending on what the highest priorities are at that time. Right now for us it's caribou. For the last two years, we will have spent over $1.5 million to monitor the caribou. Because it is

Environment committee  It's assistance with funding for research, in some cases for baseline data. We are a really big territory. We do have a research program in place, but it's difficult. It is extremely expensive, because it is such a big territory. In some cases, we have a hard time getting funding

Environment committee  One of the areas that are most expensive for us and one in which we certainly need data is polar bears. The federal government has worked closely with us on polar bears, but we need funding to continue that work. Caribou work is extremely expensive, so we need things like funding

Environment committee  We do separate research, which is going out and getting new information and monitoring populations. Every three years we monitor the population of our caribou herds. This means doing aerial surveys, which are extremely expensive. For monitoring populations of polar bears, we go o

Environment committee  Thank you, Mr. Bevington. We're certainly not in any way suggesting that climate change isn't a major factor here. It is. We are seeing changes. We don't know what the long-term effects of those changes will be. We're monitoring that, but we're not yet in a position to be able t

Environment committee  I think, really, the role for the federal government isn't so much a regulatory one as one of support. There are hunters and trappers all across the country; it's a segment of our economy that is a little hidden. So I think we'd be looking more just for general support of that li

Environment committee  Certainly from a research and monitoring perspective, we do work with Environment Canada on various aspects of wildlife population research and habitat research. In those areas we have found it a little bit difficult, because federal programs tend to focus on habitat loss and how

Environment committee  We haven't seen any. There's nothing documented yet in terms of hybridization.

Environment committee  I can.

Environment committee  The federal government still completely manages migratory birds and issues the licences because of the international Migratory Birds Convention Act. Canada and the United States have this agreement about how migratory birds are managed. Because migratory birds are migratory and

Environment committee  Yes. We don't know what drives these cycles. We do think there is a climatic factor, as Evan has said. Climate change may be a factor, but climate change may also be a positive factor in that green-up is happening earlier. We don't know what the balance of the changes with climat

Environment committee  We haven't documented any changes like that. I did mention that we are seeing new species moving up, but we haven't yet seen drastic changes in any of our other species populations.