Tallymen’s Contribution. The Cree tallymen play a prominent role in the implementation of the Agreement’s adapted forestry regime. In keeping with the Cree culture, the Agreement entrusts the tallymen with a stewardship role for family hunting grounds and, as a result, many responsibilities. Among other things, each tallyman is responsible for defining sites of interest, contributing to identify residual stands to be preserved in cutting sectors, agreeing on harmonization measures and pointing out any other concern to consider in the forest management plan preparation process. Since the Agreement was signed, few formal initiatives have targeted informing the tallymen about the adapted forestry regime and their role with regard to it. Our survey showed that the tallymen do not clearly understand the Agreement’s objectives, implementation mechanisms (JWGs and CQFB), modalities (mainly the goal and status of protecting sites of wildlife interest), forest management planning processes, decision-making tools (including the planning-support map) and, consequently, their own role in the Agreement’s processes. Even if a majority of tallymen express a good level of satisfaction with the Agreement, generally speaking, they feel they have made a better contribution to planning since the onset of the adapted forestry regime. However, they continue to hope that processes and modalities will improve. The tour also showed that certain aspects of the adapted forestry regime caused dissatisfaction among many tallymen, who generally feel that they are “informed” rather than “consulted”, they consider they do not have insufficient influence on planning; do not really notice a difference in the field between harvesting on sites of wildlife interest compared to the rest of the trapline. To optimize tallymen’s contribution to the adapted forestry regime’s implementation, we must ensure that they understand their roles and the mechanisms and are satisfied with their application. There is clearly also a need for consolidating relations between tallymen and planners. Recommendation 3 Strengthen tallymen’s contribution to the forest management planning process.
