Engagement Insights
Our engagements highlighted the importance of consuming and sharing harvested wildlife. According to participants, meat from harvested wildlife makes up an average of 34% of their diets, and 61% of respondents receive harvested wildlife meat from others.
Participants shared their concerns about consuming meat from infected animals, with 75% of those who responded showing a preference to hunt/eat wildlife from CWD-free areas.
Over the past year and throughout our engagements, we heard concerns from Métis Citizens about threats to caribou populations.
Caribou populations have been declining in Alberta the last few decades and have been listed as a Threatened species since 1985 under Alberta’s Wildlife Act.
The main concern we heard was the spread of CWD throughout cervid species (deer, moose, elk) in Alberta that are most often harvested for food. Participants were concerned how the spread of CWD among these species may contaminate meat and impact human health.
Additionally, participants were concerned about how CWD may impact already dwindling caribou populations in the province.
We also spoke to participants about their understanding of the CWD Surveillance Program run by the Alberta government. Here is what participants shared:
- 54% of respondents were aware of the CWD Surveillance Program before the MNA held engagements in the summer of 2021
- 51% of respondents were aware that harvesters were required to submit deer heads for testing in some Wildlife Management Units (WMUs)
- 67% of respondents have submitted a deer head before to be tested for CWD, while only 15% had extracted tissues from a deer head to submit for CWD testing
Participants in our engagements identified a variety of barriers limiting Métis Citizens from participating in the CWD Testing Program. We have provided information on our Resources page to try and help remove some of them.