These “strategies of manufactured uncertainty” have “successfully delayed efforts to effectively address the decline of boreal caribou, which is protected under federal, provincial and territorial legislation, and inhibited meaningful dialogue about socially acceptable conservation solutions,” according to a new report in the June issue of Wildlife Society Bulletin, “From Climate to Caribou: How Manufactured Uncertainty is Impacting Wildlife Management.”
The report, by researchers from Ontario Nature and the Universities of Guelph and Toronto, further states that while the fossil fuel sector is the most prominent purveyor of science denial — with five companies and organizations alone spending US$115 million a year “to avoid new climate policy and regulation” — similar tactics have been used in debates over regulating lead paint, tobacco, DDT, acid rain and chlorofluorocarbons. All employ a “multi-pronged strategy of denial”: deny the problem exists, deny its key causes and claim that resolving the problem is too costly.
The strategy also includes vilification of and personal attacks against those who advocate for change. Some have cast efforts to improve caribou habitat policy as “eco-terrorism” and “environmental extremism.”
Focusing on Ontario, the researchers show the strategy has been employed in the conflict between industrial logging and boreal caribou conservation. Boreal caribou are listed as “threatened” and are protected under federal species at risk legislation. “Yet, as scientific understanding of the decline of boreal caribou populations has become clearer, and agreement among scientists and governments about habitat management requirements has increased, campaigns of denial have intensified in the public sphere,” the report says.
The Ontario Forest Industries Association and others deny boreal caribou are at risk, despite numerous studies showing they are, and claim that “without an adequate understanding how woodland caribou herds use the landscape — let alone a firm grasp of the differences between ecotypes of the subspecies — it is not possible to develop science-based policy.”
The report quotes forestry interests that claim industrial logging does not harm caribou and, in fact, may help them, despite contrary evidence from numerous peer-reviewed studies.
A number of organizations, politicians and media outlets have also argued protecting caribou will kill jobs and wreak economic havoc. However, research shows that other factors, such as “structural changes in the demand for forest products, high labour and energy costs, and decline of real net investment in the sector” have caused recent forest industry downturns. Ultimately, if economic growth must come at the cost of boreal caribou survival, it isn’t sustainable.
