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Want to see a woodland caribou fight for its habitat, literally? The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society launched an unusual new campaign this morning designed to raise awareness about the need to protect caribou habitat in the Canadian boreal forest. CPAWS calls the stretch of caribou habitat in Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec "the caribou belt," and using a sports analogy, has created a video campaign that shows a caribou character fighting to maintain that belt.

The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society today launched a series of tongue-in-cheek videos focusing on the problems face by Woodland Caribou in Manitoba and across Canada.

CPAWS Manitoba wants viewers to write to Manitoba Premier Gary Doer to lobby his government to do more to protect caribou habitat from logging and other development.

To watch the video and learn more about CPAWS campaign go to http://caribouandyou.ca/action/videos.php. It features a caribou learning martial arts to survive.

The first global review of their status has found that populations are declining almost everywhere they live, from Alaska and Canada, to Greenland, Scandinavia and Russia.

The iconic deer is vital to indigenous peoples around the circumpolar north.

Yet it is increasingly difficult for the deer to survive in a world warmed by climate change and altered by industrial development, say scientists.

Reindeer and caribou belong to the same species, Rangifer tarandus.

Caribou live in Canada, Alaska and Greenland; while reindeer live in Russia, Norway, Sweden and Finland.

THOMPSON—The Province of Manitoba is responding to growing business opportunities in the north by supporting a program to support entrepreneurs who harvest and develop non-timber forest products, Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives Minister Rosann Wowchuk and Culture, Heritage, Tourism and Sport Minister Eric Robinson, acting minister of Aboriginal and northern affairs, announced today.

CONSERVATION Minister Stan Struthers said the province hasn't made a final decision on whether to let Tim Hortons build a camp for disadvantaged children at Meditation Lake in Whiteshell Provincial Park.

Struthers, speaking at the Tuesday morning breakfast meeting of the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce, said the province believes Meditation Lake in the Whiteshell is the best location for the Tim Hortons camp but added a final decision will be made once a series of open houses have been completed.

You may have a caribou in your pocket. This important Canadian icon has appeared on our 25-cent coin since 1936. It would be a tragedy if this were the only place you could spot this magnificent animal, though.

If we don’t protect Canada’s boreal forest, that could be the result. The boreal forest extends like a green halo over 35 per cent of our northern land mass. Stretching from Newfoundland to the Yukon, it forms the largest uninterrupted intact forest left on the planet.

DEAR EDITOR:

Re: Province's caribou numbers stable (April 13). Across Canada, woodland caribou have disappeared from half of their historic range. The new federal government report on woodland caribou shows that we need to maintain and protect their boreal forest habitats in order for this threatened species to survive. In Manitoba, the report makes it clear that eight of our 11 identified caribou ranges are on the edge and any further habitat disturbance within them will likely lead to dwindling local populations.

Environment Canada assembled some of the world's top woodland-caribou scientists for advice on the habitat needed to save the threatened animals, and then it rejected their suggestions.

The scientists' conclusions, released in a report last week, say that development should be tightly controlled in about half the northern boreal forest, to give caribou a better shot at long-term survival. The report also estimated that 30 of Canada's 57 woodland-caribou populations have shrunk to such low levels they are probably no longer self-sustaining.

OTTAWA — The federal government plans to release a report Thursday that finds half Canada's boreal caribou herds are in decline and may die out in the next century without changes to their habitats, The Canadian Press has learned.

The finding that 29 of the 57 recognized herds are "not self-sustaining" brings the boreal caribou another step closer to possibly being bumped up to endangered species status.

Parts of the highly technical, 300-page report show caribou herds are likeliest to decline in northern Alberta, northern Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories.

Manitobans like to think we’re ahead of the green game because we have a plethora of provincial parks, no stinky tar sands and we don’t burn dirty coal to power our homes.

All that — plus a pretty good record on geothermal heat and relatively clean water — is true. But when you dig a little deeper, especially into the behaviour of average Manitobans, the picture isn’t so pristine.

Despite a lot of incremental, small-scale government initiatives, Manitoba is falling behind on a lot of green things.