Faced with a serious problem of white-tailed deer overpopulation in the Iles-de-Boucherville and Mont-Saint-Bruno national parks, the Société des Établissements de Plein Air du Québec (SEPAQ) plans to slaughter at least 200 animals. over the next year, learned The duty. A decision taken to protect ecosystems, but which should also reduce the number of young deer who starve in winter.
“We will move forward in the coming months with the development of an intervention plan for the protection of natural environments which will include a reduction in livestock”, and this, “by a lethal method”, said Friday the spokesperson for the Crown corporation, Simon Boivin. In the context of an interview granted after multiple exchanges by e-mail, he specifies that the fellings will take place “in the fall or next winter”.
If he was not able to give a precise number of deer that will be killed, Mr. Boivin estimates that “at least 200 deer” will have to be slaughtered, in total, for the two parks. It must be said that SEPAQ wishes to return to a deer density that would be more in line with “the support capacity of the environment”. This is five animals per square kilometer (km2), according to available scientific data.
However, the density of deer in the two parks is significantly higher. It is at 30 animals per km2 in the Îles-de-Boucherville park, which represents 250 deer too many. As for the Mont-Saint-Bruno park, the density is 15 animals per km2, an excess of at least 100 animals. To reduce livestock so as to preserve biodiversity in these two protected environments, which is part of SEPAQ’s mission, it would therefore be necessary to slaughter 350 animals.
After the outcry for months over the slaughter of approximately 60 deer in Michel-Chartrand Park in Longueuil, SEPAQ expects its project to arouse “discontent”. But she insists on the need to act in order to tackle the very real repercussions of overpopulation on these natural environments. “Parc national des Îles-de-Boucherville and Parc national du Mont-Saint-Bruno are islands of biodiversity in a peri-urban environment that are precious and must be preserved. Allowing the situation to continue would be damaging to ecosystems. Even if we understand that people will not agree with the scientific approach recommended to us, we have a duty to act when the ecosystem is out of balance,” explains Mr. Boivin.
“This solution is being applied in various locations across Canada and the United States, including national parks. This is not a new approach,” he adds. This type of “selective hunting” is also the method “recommended” by the Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks, which will be responsible for issuing the necessary permits. And like Longueuil, SEPAQ plans to distribute meat from slaughtered animals to food banks in the region.
For Marco Festa-Bianchet, full professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Sherbrooke, SEPAQ made the right choice by opting to kill surplus deer. “The hunt of this type, under veterinary supervision, is very well organised. It also makes it possible to recover meat for food banks,” he points out.
The biologist maintains, however, that once this operation is completed, the SEPAQ “will have to continue to control the herds in the long term”, since the white-tailed deer are very prolific. For example, there were 142 animals in 2015 at Parc des Îles-de-Boucherville, which means that their number has more than doubled in just six years. “The problem is that the Longueuil saga has taken tools away from managers, who are afraid to act,” explains Mr. Festa-Bianchet.
” Pilot project “
Some 200 pages of emails obtained by The duty under the access to information law, and partly redacted, show that the SEPAQ was working on a “pilot project” of selective hunting from the spring of 2020. This project was to tackle overpopulation in the two national parks , a problem that has been known for several years.
However, the pilot project never came to fruition, due to a lack of support from SEPAQ’s regional “partners”. The state corporation does not specify who, and Simon Boivin assures that the abandonment does not stem from the Longueuil saga.
A SEPAQ executive stresses, however, in an email written two days after the announcement from Longueuil, in November 2020, the need to continue “awareness-raising efforts”, warning that “the reactions are intense and very emotional”. SEPAQ then prepares lines of communication “to justify to the media the delays in the deer file”.
In another e-mail, an official from the Service de l’environnement of the City of Boucherville indicates that the case of Longueuil “only illustrates the emotional nature of the management of urban wildlife: the unfavorable reactions of the population are so strong that ‘it is difficult to pacify the discourse with rational arguments’. Then, in March 2021, the director of the two parks, Cédric Landuydt, wrote to an elected representative from the region that “this file is going to be very politicized, so we must take the time to do things right, because this could quickly go off the rails”.
Lack of food
The overpopulation of deer in Parc national des Îles-de-Boucherville has also caused the death of many young individuals from starvation in recent winters, according to what emerges from certain email exchanges. On March 15, 2021, Mr. Landuydt wrote that there are “almost every day”, in an email addressed to the “head of the conservation and education department” of the two parks. In response, she points out that “we have a lot of mortality this year”.
A few minutes later, Cédric Landuydt wrote to six of his colleagues that “the situation is well known to the park team” and he directly attributed the high mortality to “a flagrant lack of food for young deer” due to overpopulation. . According to him, “more or less five young deer a week” are found dead at this time of year.
How many young deer were found dead in 2020 and 2021? “It happens that a park warden or a visitor mentions that he has observed a deceased deer, particularly in a context of overabundance. But there is no particular monitoring of the number of these observations each winter,” replied SEPAQ. The carcasses of these animals are however picked up, said Mr. Boivin on Friday.