Comments in the media by the Chamber of Mines and a letter to the editor last Friday question the validity of the recent poll on Yukoners’ attitudes to the environment and the Peel Watershed.
The Chamber of Mines suggested that, because the poll was conducted in the summer, many miners would have been out in the field, and so would not have been included in the poll.
Miners are not the only people in the Yukon who tend to be out of town in the summer.
I was guiding a canoe trip on the magnificent Snake River in the Peel Watershed at the time the poll was conducted and was therefore not able to participate.
I know several others who were also away guiding or recreating in the splendid Yukon wilderness at this time for work or leisure.
And there are many Yukoners who are not in the mining industry who are out leading wilderness trips, monitoring fish and wildlife populations, working construction or simply enjoying the great outdoors, and unable to answer a polling company’s phone calls in the summer.
Yukoners are mobile people à no matter when one tries to poll or consult them, many will be working, hunting, fishing or holidaying away from their home phones.
Nonetheless, people involved in resource extraction were surveyed. Nineteen per cent of the Yukoners surveyed by the poll have been involved in oil and gas or mining as a business, job or contract. Of these, 59 per cent support a large protected area in the Peel.
Regardless of who was home or not, the results seem clear. More than seven out of every 10 Yukoners want the Peel Watershed protected. And I agree!
Richard Malvasio
Whitehorse