Environment | Donate your land to better preserve it

Green initiatives to improve the environment are springing up on a small and large scale across the province. Twice a month, our journalists present ideas to inspire you.

Valerie Simard
The Press

“Little city guy”, Guy Chabot says he was not “educated in ecology”. Until he buys land in Granby, settles there and the news of accelerating climate change begins to alarm him. The urgency to act prompted him to donate part of his land to a conservation organization.

“Please call me at supper time, because I’m often in my forest,” asks Guy Chabot. “His forest” is on the land he bought in 1976 in Granby. He built his house there, operates a family sugar bush with 400 taps and maintains his forest with the advice of forest engineers. At the end of this land is a peat bog of great ecological richness. A humid environment where he rarely set foot.

“There are all kinds of stories about people losing cows in there! he says in a telephone interview. The bog is really deep. There is up to 70 ft (21 m) of peat thick. »

It was only several years after acquiring it that he became aware of its great ecological value. “I learned over time what value it could have for our survival, the human. »

“An exceptional environment”

According to the inventory that was carried out, there are about a hundred wildlife species and 125 plant species, some of which are likely to be designated as threatened or vulnerable, including the Canada warbler, the northern dusky salamander and the walnut tree. ash.

“It’s an exceptional environment,” notes Frédérick Chir, project coordinator at the Foundation for the Protection of Ecosystems in the Haute-Yamaska ​​Territory (SETHY). “Peatlands provide ecosystem goods and services to people and nature. They can mitigate the effects of climate change and flooding, filter water, capture greenhouse gases. »

To preserve this biodiversity, Guy Chabot signed the organization’s moral protection contract a dozen years ago. This is one of the options available to landowners wishing to perpetuate the conservation of their part of nature.

Then, he wanted to push the approach further by donating his 13.5 hectares of peat bog to SETHY. The transaction, notarized, materialized last April after four years of procedures and studies to assess the ecological and market value of the land. Valued at $57,000, this donation will enable Mr. Chabot to receive a tax receipt.

“It’s really not the pecuniary side I was looking for,” says the 75-year-old man.

What he also wants is to take advantage of the platform offered by his gesture to awaken consciousness “because we are going towards a wall and there is no one who takes it really seriously, he complains. It seems that we are blind to what is happening, but from year to year, we can see that the heat waves are more numerous, the rains are more abundant, more drastic. That’s what motivated me to make this gesture.”

Influencer in his own way

Now Guy Chabot wants to convince his neighbors to do the same. About twenty owners share the territory of the bog, whose total area is estimated at at least 200 hectares, according to Frédérick Chir.

“It’s a big bog,” he says. What’s crazy is that it’s 10 minutes from downtown. It’s incredible ! It is undeniable that this must be protected. »

While ecological donations remain extremely rare — this is the third received by SETHY — Quebecers are increasingly aware of the importance of protecting wetlands. According to a study conducted by the Canada Research Chair in Ecological Economics at the Université du Québec en Outaouais, 83% of Quebecers say they are concerned about the loss of these environments and 84% believe that the Government of Quebec should do more to protect them.

Since the adoption of the Act respecting the conservation of wetlands and bodies of waterin 2017, 11.9 km^⁠2 of wetlands were destroyed in Quebec in exchange for compensation totaling $75 million.

Hence the importance of Mr. Chabot’s gesture which, Frédérick Chir hopes, will be a spark plug for other owners of the Saint-Charles peat bog.

“Maybe we will be two, then three, then four and that will do something good, hopes Guy Chabot. I hope to see this before I die. »