Animal Management, Land Use, and Indigenous Rights: A 150-Year Policy Gap

When people think about land use, they usually picture zoning maps, housing footprints, or transportation corridors. They rarely picture dogs or cats. Yet in many rural and remote Indigenous communities, animal management is the invisible factor that determines how people actually move across the land. It dictates which spaces feel accessible and safe and which remain off-limits for everyday use.

What is often framed as a narrow animal welfare challenge is in reality a structural social determinant of health. When a child cannot walk to school or a resident cannot access a community building because of roaming packs or zoonotic risks, the physical environment itself is compromised. This is not a choice. It is a direct consequence of a 150 years of federal policy that excluded First Nations from the animal-related infrastructure that functions as an invisible utility in settler towns.

In most Canadian municipalities, services like veterinary care and bylaw enforcement are recognized as essential public utilities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these services were even formally designated as essential by provincial governments to ensure the continued safety and health of the public. However, in Indigenous communities, these same requirements are often left to the whims of volunteerism, philanthropy, or short-term charity. This reliance on goodwill rather than governance creates a systemic gap that undermines public health, community safety, and land rights.

The core reality is this: Animal management is not an optional program or a charitable cause. It is foundational infrastructure that enables the safe exercise of Indigenous land rights and the viability of public health investments.

This inseparability is a direct consequence of 150 years of federal policy design. In most Canadian municipalities, animal-related infrastructure, including veterinary services, shelters, and management systems, functions as an invisible utility that allows residents to move freely and safely. Because First Nations were systematically excluded from these governance systems for over a century, the absence of accessible services has transformed animal management into a direct constraint on land use. What is a behind-the-scenes service in a settler town has become a structural barrier to mobility and wellbeing in Indigenous communities.

This is fundamentally an issue of what policymakers call “Active Transportation.” Governments are currently investing millions of dollars in walking paths, cycling lanes, and school corridors to improve public health. Specific funding streams now exist to support these projects, but their success depends on a safe community environment. You can build the most beautiful infrastructure, but if children are afraid of being bitten by dogs, or if Elders must change their routes because of roaming packs, those multi-million-dollar projects cannot fulfill their purpose.

This means that federal and provincial infrastructure programs that fund active transportation should treat community animal management as an eligible, prerequisite investment, just as they do drainage or lighting.

This highlights a significant gap in how the federal government meets its fiduciary duty toward First Nations. If the physical environment is not safe enough for an Elder to walk to a community center or for a child to walk to school, the government’s infrastructure investments are failing to serve their intended purpose. Addressing animal management is not merely an optional budgetary choice to ensure project viability; it is a necessary step in meeting the government’s legal and moral obligations to support the health, safety, and sovereignty of Indigenous communities.

To solve this, animal management must be integrated into the broader community development process. Many Nations are already exercising their own laws and governance in this space, despite the absence of sustained federal support. Just as leadership directs engineers and contractors to consider drainage or electricity, technical teams need to recognize animal management as foundational infrastructure that enables community mobility. Making things right requires a coordinated effort from planners, economists, accountants, and other professionals who understand that community-led animal management protects the long-term value of infrastructure, reduces downstream costs across healthcare and emergency response, and supports the community’s ability to use their land fully and safely.

When essential services are absent, the consequences quickly move beyond public safety and into the biological health of the land itself. This reflects the core of the One Health framework, which recognizes that human, animal, and environmental health are a single, interconnected system. Any community denied access to essential animal management infrastructure for over a century will face a predictable chain reaction of health risks that cannot be contained.

Addressing these risks is not a matter for charity; it is a basic requirement for keeping the land safe. From the threat of rabies to parasites like roundworms that can linger in the soil where children play, the health of animals is inseparable from the safety of the ground people walk on. These risks are amplified where animal populations are undermanaged and disease is widespread. Without access to vaccination or spay and neuter services, outbreaks of canine parvovirus and feline upper respiratory disease are common, particularly among puppies and kittens.

Sick, weakened, or dead animals can become easy targets for predators, turning undermanaged dogs and cats themselves into attractants. Cat colonies and free-roaming dog populations can draw apex predators, including wolves, bears, and cougars, into community spaces in search of prey. As predators follow these attractants into human-populated areas, the potential for human–wildlife conflict increases, creating risks for people, wildlife, and the animals caught between them, and further limiting how people can move through and use their land.

Indigenous Lands Managers understand this intersection better than almost anyone. Across the communities we work with, more than half of the staff leading animal-management planning are Lands Managers or hold similar roles. They see firsthand how animal-related issues intersect with mobility, safety, and public health. They also understand that animal management is not only about animal wellbeing. It is about health and supporting the right of people to use their land fully and safely.

This is a matter of inherent rights and international standards. Under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Nations have the right to own, use, and control their territories. When a lack of federal investment in animal management makes community spaces unsafe, it directly infringes on those rights. Traditionally, land-use grant-makers and foundations have overlooked this connection, but recognizing it is essential for supporting true sovereignty.

Community leadership carries this burden in ways that are often invisible to outside policymakers. Chiefs have told us that one of the most challenging parts of their work is receiving a steady stream of calls about barking or roaming dogs while they are also managing multi-million-dollar infrastructure projects and housing shortages. Responsibility for addressing these concerns often rests with people whose time is already stretched across multiple large-scale responsibilities, even as animal management itself remains a complex and high-risk issue. The result is chronic stress for leadership and compromised health and safety for the community.

At Increased ACCESS, we believe that solving these challenges requires more than goodwill or short-term interventions. It requires coordinated, outcomes-driven approaches that move community animal management out of the margins and into the core of how infrastructure is planned, funded, and sustained. When solutions are designed to address root causes, align health, land use, and economic considerations, and support Indigenous-led governance, communities can move from managing risk to building lasting safety and resilience. That shift is essential if people are to fully and confidently use their land, today and into the future.