Inventory after inventory, we see that the situation of woodland caribou is getting worse in Quebec. The new data published Monday by the Legault government thus reveal that a large population of the North Shore is showing a decline which should lead it, in part, towards “extinction”. It must be said that its habitat is increasingly reduced, mainly due to logging.
As part of new aerial inventories carried out during the winter of 2022, the Government of Quebec notably overflew a territory of nearly 30,000 km2 in order to assess the state of the forest-dwelling caribou population known as “Outardes”, whose the habitat is located north of Baie-Comeau.
The data collected by wildlife experts are unequivocal: for the 2018-2021 period alone, the average annual decline of this population reached 11%, due to high mortality and too few births. “The low recruitment observed in recent years is insufficient to offset the high adult mortality rate observed during this same period,” they note in their report, posted online Monday afternoon.
Following the inventories, a total of 803 caribou were observed, but it is estimated that this population could number, at best, 1180 animals. Of this number, there would be barely 8% of fawns. “In sum, several indicators of the state of the population of woodland caribou Bustards suggest a precarious state […] and an adult survival rate lower than the values expected to hope for self-sufficiency of the population”, can we read in the government report.
To better understand this declining trend, we report data for a territory of more than 10,000 km2 overlapping the territory of two populations, that of Manicouagan, located further north and less affected by logging, and the population Bustards. “The estimated densities in this sector in 2014 were among the highest in Quebec (6.3 caribou per 100 km2), attesting to the quality of habitat in this sector and the low proportion of disturbances of natural and anthropogenic origin. In 2014, 719 caribou were observed on this territory, but only 319 were observed in 2022.
In its southernmost portion, the decline is also very obvious. South of the Manicouagan reservoir, barely 38 animals were observed in 2022, compared to 113 in 2014. And south of the 51st parallel, only six groups of caribou comprising 92 individuals were observed in a territory of more than 10,000 km2. These data concretely suggest “a gradual local extinction of the groups located south of the range of the woodland caribou of the Bustard population”, conclude the experts on the species.
Logging
“What we observe in the Bustard population is representative of what we have seen in several others for several years. The southern fringe is showing worrying signs of decline, because that is where logging is concentrated and where the cascade of events that leads to increased predation operates,” explains Martin-Hugues St-Laurent, professor in the Department in biology from the University of Quebec in Rimouski and specialist in research on this threatened species.
“The newly published inventory data confirms what science has been telling us for years about disturbances in caribou habitat: when the habitat is disturbed at excessively high thresholds, populations find themselves in decline,” adds Pier-Olivier, director of conservation at the Society for Nature and Parks of Quebec.
This constant increase in the degradation of the species’ habitat in Quebec is largely attributable to the forestry industry, but also to road construction and mining. Result: herds have been practically wiped off the map. This is the case in Val-d’Or and in Charlevoix, where the animals were captured and put in enclosures to prevent their disappearance.
Elsewhere, the most recent inventories are in line with what was observed for the bustard population. The aerial inventory carried out in 2020 over 28,000 km2, for the caribou population of Pipmuacan, an important territory for the Innu, made it possible to evaluate the population at only 225 animals. “the habitat disturbances” are too great, “the population is in an extremely precarious state and its capacity for self-sufficiency is unlikely under current conditions”, concluded the government experts.
“Great precariousness”
As for the Caniapiscau population, which is part of the three inventories published on Monday, Quebec government experts have counted 329 caribou on a territory of 10,000 km2, but which accounts for barely 8% of the distribution of the Caniapiscau population.
In Gaspésie, the situation of the isolated herd that survives for the most part in Parc national de la Gaspésie (but also outside of it in winter) remains on the verge of extinction.
According to data dating back to the fall of 2021, but which was published on Monday, January 16, 2023, there would be 37 to 40 caribou. “The abundance estimates for 2020 and 2021 reveal a demographic stability of the population, whose numbers have decreased continuously until 2019. The population of mountain caribou in the Gaspésie subsists in a context of great precariousness given the small size of the three groups that make it up, the low rate of recruitment and the lack of exchanges between the groups,” the report sums up.
In this context, the Legault government is betting on an extreme strategy to try to avoid their disappearance: the pregnant females will be captured shortly and placed in an enclosure to give birth there. If all goes well, they should be released, with their fawn, at the end of next summer.
The Legault government must present its “strategy” next June to try to avoid the disappearance of the woodland caribou. The federal government had threatened last year to intervene to protect the critical habitat of the species, due to the absence of a Quebec conservation plan for this deer.