The Chief and council of Minegoziibe Anishinabe (formerly Pine Creek First Nation) filed a lawsuit in the Court of Queen’s Bench to stop the logging being done by Louisiana Pacific within their traditional lands which includes Duck Mountain Provincial Park and Provincial Forest.
The lawsuit is happening until the Government of Manitoba will conduct consultations with indigenous people after it hasn’t been consulted about the forest management rights for over 15 years.
Minegoziibe Anishinabe, which is 110 kilometres north of Dauphin, filed the lawsuit on behalf of the 4,000 Anishinaabeg members.
The group says the logging has been a long-standing issue with concerns about the decreasing population of animals such as moose across the area since 1995 which caused the province to no longer allow moose hunting in the area since 2011.
Right now Duck Mountain is the only provincial park that allows commercial timber harvesting with the first Forest Management Plan for the area being authorized back in 1996 and was supposed to be revisited after 10 years.
During that time Louisiana-Pacific submitted a plan for an additional 20 years which wasn’t approved by the province but in 2012 the Lieutenant Governor authorized Manitoba and their conservation minister to extend the term of the original contract which happened multiple times until the most recent one at the end of 2021.
The lawsuit wants the court to stop the current extension and wants Louisiana-Pacific to not be allowed to continue logging until they have consulted with the First Nation directly.
The case will be in front of a judge on February 8 and we will continue to have more updates as they are released.
