Protection of caribou in Quebec | “Something will have to happen soon,” says Steven Guilbeault

The constantly postponed submission by Quebec of its caribou protection strategy is causing impatience in Ottawa, which is once again threatening to intervene unilaterally to protect the habitat of this threatened species, without however specifying a deadline.

“It is clear that the Quebec government is slow to act,” lamented the federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault, on the sidelines of a press conference Monday in Montreal.

“This problem is not going to resolve itself; time is not our ally, quite the contrary,” he said, recalling that the law obliges him to protect caribou and other endangered species.

Ottawa could thus adopt a decree to protect an entire section of caribou habitat in Quebec, de facto banning industrial activities such as logging, the main culprits in the decline of the deer, a threat that Ottawa had already brandished at the beginning of 2023 .

“If there is no concrete action from the Quebec government, I will have no other choice,” declared Minister Guilbeault, without giving a specific timetable.

Ottawa had accepted that Quebec delay the publication planned for June 2023 of its caribou protection strategy due to the historic scale of the forest fires which ravaged Quebec at that time.

“But it’s still been a long time, the next forest fire season is coming and we still don’t have that plan, something will have to happen soon,” the minister said impatiently, recalling that the Quebec government is committed to protecting 65% of critical caribou habitat.

Moving the caribou “doesn’t solve anything”

Steven Guilbeault lukewarmly welcomes the Quebec government’s “supplementation” project, which plans to capture six caribou in Nord-du-Québec to introduce them into the Val-d’Or herd, which now lives in enclosures, reported The PressMonday.

This operation aims to promote the growth of this herd, which now only has nine individuals, by avoiding possible issues of genetic diversity.

“What we are trying to protect is of course the caribou, but it is also its habitat,” responded the minister. Move the caribou, I’m willing, but it’s the ecosystem that we must seek to protect. »

The caribou is a species “which is an indicator of the state of an ecosystem” and everything that depends on it, including industrial activities such as logging, underlined Mr. Guibeault.

“We cannot think of having a healthy forest, having a healthy forest sector in Quebec or elsewhere in Canada, if the species which are indicators of the health of these ecosystems are declining,” declared the minister.

“If the caribou are not doing well, it’s because the forest ecosystem is not doing well,” he added.

The office of the Quebec Minister of the Environment, the Fight against Climate Change, Wildlife and Parks, Benoit Charette, had not yet called back The Press at the time of publishing these lines.

Minister Guilbeault was in Montreal to announce an investment of $1.5 million to finance initiatives to protect species at risk in Quebec.