Officers began using infra-red glasses so they could see poachers in the dark. They went undercover. They hid in the woods and followed fishermen out on the water. Telephone hotlines have been set up to give the public a chance to help catch poachers.

This crackdown comments on how people should and do make their living. It assumes that rural Newfoundlanders no longer need a freezer full of fish or a moose in the fall. They have UI and welfare to get them through hard times. Electricity and oil heat homes. Grocery stores provide meat and fish. Regular jobs provide cash. The traditional way of life is no longer needed or wanted. The province's natural resources should be saved for businesses like logging or tourism.

But is this true? A higher percentage of people hunt and spend time hunting in Newfoundland than anywhere else in Canada.¹ A provincial report shows most Newfoundlanders who hunt and fish do so for food, not just for fun. The same report says that poaching in the province continues to be very high. Most Newfoundlanders believe their neighbours poach animals and fish for food, not for sale.²

In 1994 Newfoundlanders were charged with more than 3,000 fishery and wildlife offenses.³ The cod fishery stayed closed that year. Unemployment in rural Newfoundland was at least 20 percent. In some communities it was as high as 80 percent.

Watson Lane sees this as an attack on the traditional Newfoundland way of life. Lane is a retired school principal from Twillingate. He is the last person you would expect to thumb his nose at the law. Lane has always lived and worked in rural Newfoundland. He says local people are slowly being cut off from the natural world around them. In 1994 he started the Alexander Bay Association of Hunters and Fisher Persons. The group believes rural Newfoundlanders are being blamed for the province's problems.

"It is not the Newfoundland man, woman and child going out in the boat on Sunday afternoon that did all this," says Lane. "I think the authorities are obsessed with trying to cure all our resource and economic evils by banning our cultural heritage." Lane points out that while local people were being arrested for jigging, company trawlers were allowed to take a by-catch of cod. As firewood quotas were cut, pulp and paper companies clearcut forests.

Lane points out that while local people were being arrested for jigging, company trawlers were allowed to take a by-catch of cod. As firewood quotas were cut, pulp and paper companies clearcut forests.