(Montreal) Montreal will multiply by five the surface area of the Parc-nature des Sources, located between Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau airport and the Technoparc, which will eventually become larger than the Parc du Mont-Royal and will allow the protection of natural environments. of the sector.
The city’s executive committee on Friday adopted a draft bylaw increasing the park’s boundary to 219 hectares (2.19 square kilometers) from the current 39 hectares.
This new perimeter will make it possible to integrate the Dorval golf course and the Champ des Monarques into the Parc-nature des Sources, a federal land that has been the subject of various controversies in recent years with the planned construction, then canceled of a factory of the Medicom company or its mowing by Aéroports de Montréal, the current tenant of the premises.
The perimeter also includes private properties, specifies the City, which is considering the possibility of making acquisitions, entering into agreements or even applying its right of first refusal.
“The new delimitation was an essential step to allow us to negotiate with private owners in order to protect natural environments as much as possible,” said in a press release the vice-president of the executive committee, Caroline Bourgeois.
These natural environments are particularly popular with birdwatchers, who go there to observe the some 200 species of birds that have been recorded there, including the warbler, the pileated woodpecker or the least bittern, the smallest heron in North America. North, an endangered species.
There is also milkweed, the only plant on which the caterpillars of the monarch butterfly feed, an endangered species in Canada, hence the name Monarch Field.
Election promise
Mayor Valérie Plante thus surpasses the commitment made during the 2021 election campaign to increase the area of the Sources nature park to 175 hectares.
The expansion of the Parc-nature des Sources will contribute to reaching the target of protecting 10% of the land territory of the City of Montreal, underlines the Plante administration.
The new delimitation of the park must now be presented to the municipal council and the agglomeration councils concerned to be adopted there, by the end of the summer.
The announcement is applauded by the Quebec section of the Society for Nature and Parks (SNAP Quebec), which sees in it “the affirmation of a clear political will” to protect the last great natural environments on the island of Montreal. and the biodiversity they harbor.
“It will take creativity and determination to make the Sources nature park a reality, but an important step has been taken,” he told The Press the biologist Alain Branchaud, director general of the organization.