The Trudeau and Legault governments want to create a second marine park in Quebec, we have learned The duty. This time, the protection would target a vast territory in the Gulf of St. Lawrence located between Anticosti Island and the North Shore, where there is rich biodiversity.
According to information obtained from various sources, an announcement is planned for Friday in Anticosti to begin the process that could lead to the creation of this marine park, the first to see the light of day in Quebec since the creation of the Saguenay marine park — Saint-Laurent, in 1998.
The federal Minister of the Environment, Steven Guilbeault, and the Quebec Minister of the Environment, Benoit Charette, are to speak at this event, which will be used to launch consultations with a view to developing the draft significant improvement of Quebec’s protected marine areas. It must be said that the Quebec government is committed to protecting 30% of the province’s marine environments by 2030. This rate is currently around 10%.
“Having visited Anticosti Island and witnessed its natural gems with my own eyes, I am delighted to work together once again with the government of Quebec, this time to protect the vast, rich and varied ecosystems of the environment. marine environment that connect the Mingan Archipelago National Park Reserve and Anticosti Island,” underlined Minister Steven Guilbeault at the Duty. It was not possible to obtain a reaction from Minister Charette’s office at the time of publishing this text.
Contacted by The duty Thursday, the mayor of Anticosti, Hélène Boulanger, did not wish to comment on the announcement planned in Port-Menier. She said she wanted to wait for the details which will be revealed on Friday concerning the marine park project.
Following the island’s listing as a UNESCO World Heritage Site last September, due to the richness of its geology, she believes that her island community has entered an era more favorable to “sustainable development” and to “ecotourism”. A meeting related to this registration is currently being held in Anticosti.
The announcement planned for this week constitutes a major change of course compared to the oil lust which targeted the island just a few years ago. A shale oil research project launched by the PQ government cost Quebec taxpayers $92 million.
Biodiversity
It was not possible to obtain details regarding the areas that will be protected, since the project is at a preliminary stage. However, it would be a question of relying on certain protection zones which have already been announced.
There are in fact, around the largest island in Quebec (17 times the surface area of the island of Montreal), “territory reserves for the purposes of protected areas” established by the government of Quebec. These are essentially modeled on the “marine refuges” set up by the federal government.
Two of these “territory reserves” are located north and northwest of Anticosti. They total 876 km2 and they were established because of the rich biodiversity of the seabed. Ottawa and Quebec would therefore like to go further by including within the limits of a future marine park an entire portion of territory located between the island and the North Shore, where we already find the federal reserve of the National Park of Archipel-de-Mingan, made up of several islands located along the coast.
The establishment of such a marine area would notably make it possible to protect an important habitat for feeding several species of fish and cetaceans, but also areas of corals and sponges.
Right whales and blue whales, two species classified as “endangered” under the Species at Risk Act, are often observed in this portion of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The fin whale and the humpback whale are also very present in this area, where scientists from the Mingan Islands Research Station have been carrying out research on great whales for more than four decades.
More protected areas
Fisheries and Oceans Canada is currently completing an analysis that could help determine the winter habitat of the St. Lawrence beluga. This must be clarified in order to better protect the “critical habitat of the species”, an objective which is included in the Recovery Strategy for the species. Observations have already been confirmed in the past in the Anticosti sector, but also along the Côte-Nord, in the north of the island.
Last March, the Legault and Trudeau governments also announced their intention to “quadruple” by 2025 the surface area of Quebec’s only marine park, that of Saguenay–Saint-Laurent. Since the area of the marine park is currently 1245 km², the expansion project means it could have an area of almost 5000 km2. The objective is to better protect the habitat of the beluga, but also of other threatened cetacean species which frequent the St. Lawrence estuary.
The federal government also wants to create a major marine protected area around the Magdalen Islands by 2025. This project is the subject of a “feasibility study” led by the federal and provincial governments, which covers an area of 17,000 km2. If it materializes, it would therefore become, by far, the most important protected maritime zone in the province.
The rules governing marine protected areas in Canada do not prohibit fishing using traps, such as lobster fishing, a very important activity for the economy of the archipelago.