Northwest Territories fur heads to China
Genuine Mackenzie Valley Fur Program takes territorial fur to Beijing
Jessica Davey-Quantick
Northern News Services
Monday, February 20, 2017
NORTHWEST TERRITORIES
Mackenzie Valley fur flew across the ocean last month, when the Genuine Mackenzie Valley Fur Program headed to the 43rd China Fur & Leather Products Fair in Beijing from Jan 12 to 15. This was the fourth year NWT has been represented in the event.
Last year's booth at the China Fur & Leather Products Fair was duplicated this year to help showcase wild furs trapped in the Mackenzie Valley. - photo courtesy of Francois Rossouw |
The fair, one of the largest of its kind, included exhibitors from 14 countries, as well as investors, buyers and representatives from international fur organizations.
"China is the largest consumer of raw fur product in the world. And so pretty much 80 per cent of the fur does flow through China now," said Francois Rossouw, a fur marketing specialist with the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment.
The GNWT backs the Genuine Mackenzie Valley Fur Program which brought a variety of wild caught fur to the trade show in China.
"It's always nice to introduce people to a new product," said Rossouw. "We get good stuff because we're a unique high-end product. With wild fur, you're always educating the potential buyer with it."
He said they brought a variety of different species to China, including marten, referred to in the industry as Canadian sable, as well as lynx, muskrat, beaver, wild mink, fox, wolf, wolverine, squirrel and weasel. The furs were raw furs, not finished garments.
"I mean we do have amazing designers but realistically we don't manufacture to international or marketing standards. I mean it's not there," said Rossouw.
In a good year, the furs can net big bucks for the territory.
"For us, the marten, which is what we consider sort of the cash crop ... usually we averaged around between $80 and $100 per skin," said Rossouw. "In a good year we will bring in an average of $1 million just on that one species. And that's real money coming back into the NWT. That's what people have to understand: this is not a government handout. When we go out and sell on the open market, that this is real money coming in from other countries."
He said the potential to leverage the fur industry is there in the region. Currently, he estimates there are about 700 trappers registered in the NWT, with about 99 per cent of them coming from the indigenous community.
"To me it's a direct link to (culture) for the indigenous population, sort of linking their past to their present," said Rossouw.
He said the industry definitely has space to expand.
"I would love to see twice as many trappers. There's 1.3 million square kilometres, and we have on record right now about 700 trappers. So that's a lot of land."
There has been push-back recently however around the fur industry. Recently, Inuit musician Tanya Tagaq's Facebook account was temporarily suspended after she shared a photo of a sealskin coat. And Lush cosmetics recently came under fire for its #Makefurhistory campaign, after calling for an end to the seal hunt. Last month, customers pushed back, prompting Lush to issue an apology.
"Our 2009 campaign did not oppose the hunting of seals by indigenous people for food, clothing or economic benefit. However, we have since learned that opposition to the seal hunt in any form is harmful to indigenous communities in Northern Canada," Lush wrote on its website. "We regret that standing up against animal cruelty negatively impacts these communities."
Rossouw said educating the public is one of the roles of the fur industry.
"The amount of disinformation out there is massive versus what actually takes place," said Rossouw. "Unsustainable is fake fur, or chemical fur. That's killing our planet. Anytime you wear (something) that's petroleum based, it's basically killing our planet. And they claim to be environmentalists which is exactly what they're not ... If you took a fur coat and buried it in the forest, it would disappear, versus a nice Gore-Tex jacket, it'll be there forever. At the end of the day, it's really educating young people of course about the fur industry and about the differences."
Next stop for the Genuine Mackenzie Valley Fur Program is Helsinki, Finland, on March 5.
