(Quebec) The Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks has no release plan for the Charlevoix caribou herd, the last 16 of which were captured in a pen this winter. Their fate will depend on the verdict of the Independent Commission on Woodland and Mountain Caribou, which does not include any biologists.
Posted at 11:39 a.m.
“As you know, there is the current Commission, and the announcement of an upcoming strategy on the management of woodland and mountain caribou. We are waiting for these details which will clarify the plan for the future with the enclosures, ”said the director general of the coordination of wildlife management at the MFFP, Carl Patenaude-Levasseur, Thursday during a technical briefing.
Mr. Patenaude-Levasseur indicated that there were no “quantitative thresholds” for the number of caribou or the amount of protected territory that would allow them to be released. The endangered species is “extremely vulnerable to human disturbance”. The Charlevoix herd is the second isolated herd to be in captivity, after the Val-d’Or herd, captured in 2020.
The Caribou Commission recently began its work, where it is studying two hypothetical scenarios, one of which would be without impact on timber supplies for the industry. The latter would be tantamount to letting the caribou die in these sectors, officials from the Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks (MFFP) recognized in a briefing for the media, La Presse reported in March.
For his part, Mr. Patenaude-Levasseur explained that the MFFP “knows the current data on the use of the territory”, but that before being able to build a plan to put an end to the enclosures, it will be necessary to know the new “parameters which will be clarified with the upcoming strategy”.
“We are starting the captivity of 16 caribou. We will see how the situation will develop. And on the question of development and housing, we refer to the commission and the strategy that will result from it,” he said.