The Minister of Forests, Wildlife and Parks, Pierre Dufour, has still not responded to the request for a meeting from the federal Minister of the Environment, Steven Guilbeault, who wanted to discuss the situation “as soon as possible”. “criticism” of woodland caribou in Quebec, learned The duty.
The letter demanding such a meeting was sent by Mr. Guilbeault’s office on January 13th. “As you know, the situation of the boreal caribou is critical, and time is running out to act in order to preserve this unique and important species in the Quebec landscape, both today and for our children and grandchildren,” said the Minister. of the Environment in the document sent to his Quebec counterpart, Benoit Charette, and to Minister Pierre Dufour.
Since then, Ottawa has had no news from the Legault government, Steven Guilbeault’s office confirmed on Tuesday. “We have not received a response from Minister Pierre Dufour’s office,” it said by email. At Minister Benoit Charette’s office on Tuesday, they said to contact Minister Dufour’s office. The cabinet of the latter, we promised a response Wednesday.
For the director general of the Society for Nature and Parks of Quebec, Alain Branchaud, the holding of this meeting between Ottawa and Quebec nevertheless seems necessary. “The Government of Quebec should respond positively and quickly to the hand extended by the federal government. Collaboration in the recovery of species at risk is the win-win option for both levels of government and this avenue could be very profitable for Quebec,” he said on Tuesday.
Ottawa intervention?
The federal minister, who has an obligation to enforce the Species at Risk Act (which protects woodland caribou), clearly showed his impatience with the Legault government in the letter sent almost a month ago. Steven Guilbeault stresses that it is time to “accelerate the taking of measures in order to obtain concrete short-term results in the protection of species at risk in Quebec”, including the woodland caribou.
In this context, he asked for a meeting “as soon as possible” with Benoit Charette and Pierre Dufour “to discuss how we can work better together,” he wrote in his letter.
In the absence of a response from Quebec, the Trudeau government considers that it will have an obligation to act in order to protect the habitat of the threatened deer. There are only a few thousand woodland caribou left in Quebec and the decline continues. Some groups of deer are now in an “extremely precarious” situation and their long-term survival is described as “unlikely”, according to experts from the Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks.
The Legault government is also well aware of the causes of caribou decline, but also of the solutions to save the species from extinction. Still at the end of November 2021, the Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks (MFFP) published a “literature review” written by several experts from the ministry led by Pierre Dufour.
“The main threat to woodland and mountain caribou populations in Quebec and Canada are habitat disturbances generated by human activities and the resulting increased predation,” reads the 282-page document. “The protection of large tracts of intact habitats and the restoration of disturbed habitats are essential for the maintenance of caribou populations”, also underline the authors of the report.
Instead of presenting a “strategy” for the protection of the species, as it had promised to do, the Legault government announced in November that it was postponing it and that it was mandating an “independent commission” responsible for carrying out consultations. regional this winter. This commission does not include any caribou experts.
tree frog protection
Minister Guilbeault’s letter to the Legault government also mentioned the desire to discuss the measures to be taken for the protection of the chorus frog, a species of batrachian protected by the Species at Risk Act, but which has lost more than 90 % of its habitat in Quebec, mainly due to urban sprawl.
Last November, the Trudeau government had to adopt an emergency decree to protect a habitat of the species that was in good country destroyed in Longueuil, in order to extend a residential boulevard. The work was already suspended, after a request for an injunction presented in court by the Quebec Center for Environmental Law and the Society for Nature and Parks of Quebec.
The work was authorized by the Ministry of the Environment and the Fight against Climate Change, despite an unfavorable opinion from MFFP experts. However, this “wildlife advisory” was not taken into account in the Legault government’s decision.
Representatives of the Ministry of the Environment of Quebec have also helped the City of Longueuil to obtain authorizations to build the street, had revealed The duty. They explained to the City the procedure to follow to avoid the unfavorable opinion of the experts of the MFFP, since they concluded that the project would destroy one of the last wetlands sheltering this threatened species.