The last caribou of Charlevoix and a good part of those which still remain in Gaspésie will be sent in captivity as of this winter, and this, and this, even if the construction of the sites which must welcome the cervids is not yet completed. The planning of the follow-up to this unprecedented project will depend on the recommendations of a commission set up by the Government of Quebec and which does not include any expert in the species.
The Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks (MFFP) presented Wednesday the details of the enclosure of caribou from two isolated herds of woodland caribou, but also the expansion of the existing enclosure of caribou in the region. of Val d’Or. “This is a unique and large-scale project,” summed up the experts from the ministry.
In the case of Charlevoix, the department has planned an enclosure of 20 hectares, or 0.2 square kilometers (km2), in which it wishes to send into “captivity” the last 17 caribou that remain in the Grands-Jardins national park.
Even if there are still elements to be installed on the planned site, the capture of the animals is planned for this winter. A capture pen system has been installed in an attempt to round up the animals, which are known to be fearful, before injecting them with a sedative and transporting them to the pen.
“We cannot assume the chances of success” for this device, however, specified the experts of the ministry, in a press briefing. “We do not take for granted that we will capture all the caribou this winter,” it added.
Animals placed in enclosures will be fed and supervised by the ministry. And even if the ministry considers that the risks of mortalities “are not non-existent”, they would be “low”. The ministry indeed regularly carries out animal capture operations for the installation of telemetric collars, in order to follow the movements of caribou in their habitats.
females in captivity
In the case of the last 32 to 36 caribou in the Gaspé, the MFFP has set up two enclosures intended to accommodate pregnant females. Each enclosure has an area of 15 hectares, or 0.15 km2. The work is 35% complete, the department said, but the captures are still scheduled “at the beginning of March”. In this case, in particular, it is planned to use net guns, which make it possible to immobilize the animals from a helicopter, for example.
As for the last seven Val-d’Or caribou, which were placed in captivity in 2020, their enclosure was enlarged to reach an area of 0.15 km2.
The three herds must now be placed in captivity because of their strong decline, mainly caused by the degradation of their forest habitat. Concretely, logging, in addition to destroying the old forests needed to feed the caribou, facilitates the arrival of predators, which has the effect of increasing the mortality of young caribou.
Permanent paddocks
The MFFP has also admitted that it is currently unknown how long the caribou could be kept in captivity. In the case of the females that will be captured in Gaspésie, however, it is planned to release them with their fawns in August, if all goes well.
The ministry stressed on Wednesday that the enclosures were built to be “permanent”, in a context where keeping these animals on the verge of extinction “could last a long time”. These spaces have also been designed to prevent the animals from being exposed to predators.
For the rest, the experts of the MFFP have repeated that the continuation of things and the possible plans for release will depend on the conclusions of the “independent commission” set up by the Legault government last fall, when pushing back the adoption of a woodland caribou protection strategy.
The Minister of Forests, Wildlife and Parks, Pierre Dufour, has indeed decided to set up a commission which will have to conduct, this winter, “a series of regional public hearings” in order to gather the opinions of the participants “ on two scenarios for adaptive caribou habitat management”. This commission has no biologists, no forest ecosystem experts and no wood-dwelling caribou experts, even though this species is studied by several scientists in Quebec.
The mandate is to conduct public consultations “in certain regions” where woodland or mountain caribou are found, namely Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, Côte-Nord, Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Nord-du- Quebec and the Gaspé Peninsula. All of these regions have a forestry industry.
Meanwhile, the most recent inventories carried out by ministry experts have shown that the situation continues to deteriorate for various populations located further north. Disturbance of their habitat, particularly by the logging industry, is the main cause of the decline.
For example, the aerial inventory carried out over 28,000 km2 in the Pipmuacan sector (covering northern Saguenay−Lac-Saint-Jean and a portion of the Côte-Nord) made it possible to assess the population at only 225 animals. “Some areas have almost no caribou left, contrary to what was observed in 2012”, can we read in a report from the ministry published in November 2021, which specifies that “habitat disturbances” are too great, but also that “the population is in an extremely precarious state and that its capacity for self-sufficiency is unlikely under current conditions”.
There are no more than a few thousand woodland caribou in Quebec and the species is considered threatened. The Trudeau government is even considering intervening to protect the species, said Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault in an interview with the Duty in December.