Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean | Quebec is moving towards the protection of the Péribonka River

The Péribonka River protected area project could finally go ahead, after being blocked for years by the Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks.

Jean-Thomas Léveillé
The Press

The Minister of the Environment, Benoit Charette, will announce this Friday his “intention to set aside” some 235 km^⁠2 of territory bordering this tributary of Lac Saint-Jean, learned The Press.

Setting aside makes it possible to protect a territory until a legal status of protection is attributed to it; it will have to be approved by the Council of Ministers next week.

The Minister will also announce the establishment of a committee responsible for determining the type of protected area that will be selected, its exact contours and various aspects related to its development and management.

This protected area project, which has been under discussion for twenty years, is one of the 83 that had been set aside by the Ministry of the Environment and the Fight against Climate Change due to the obstruction by the Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks.

Among other things, it aims to protect old-growth forests, some of the northernmost stands of yellow birch in Quebec, as well as the habitat of bald eagles and rock voles.

Quebec is also opening the door to the creation of a regional park because of the “very great recreational tourism potential” of the sector, indicates the press release to be published.

Uncertainty

Quebec’s announcement does not completely reassure the supporters of the protected area project, including the director general of Nature Quebec, Alice-Anne Simard, who points out that everything can still change as long as a legal status has not been determined.

“We would have expected the announcement of a biodiversity reserve, which is the [type d’aire protégée] for which people have mobilized for years,” she says, pointing out that this status allows recreational tourism activities.

M^me Simard stresses that a regional park cannot be part of a protected area and is concerned to see Quebec mention this option.

“If that’s what they’re doing, it’s not a protected area, it can’t be put on the register. [des aires protégées, selon des critères reconnus par l’Union internationale pour la conservation de la nature] “, she decides.

“Nothing in this announcement” guarantees that the Péribonka River will be really protected, regrets the ecologist, who sees only one good news: the setting aside of the territory puts it “protected from logging, for the moment “.

Near miss cuts

The Péribonka River protected area project almost went to the chainsaw because of the logging that the Ministry of Forests had ordered in the area last summer.

The Press had then gone up the Péribonka River with supporters of the project, worried about the irreversible damage that such cuts would have caused.

Two weeks after the publication of this report, Quebec had finally canceled these cuts and announced its desire to create a protected area “duly registered in the register”.

The eventual protection of the Péribonka River would make it possible to slightly reduce the deficit of protected areas in Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, a region where only 8.4% of the territory is protected.

This rate is far from that of 16.7% for the whole province and very far from the objective of 30% for 2030 that Quebec aims to achieve.

The 235 km² of territory that will be set aside along the Péribonka River represent an area slightly less than the 246 km² of the latest version of the project, which was already a reduction compared to the approximately 500 km² initially considered.

The Press was unable to join the Péribonka River Safeguard Committee, at the origin of the protected area project, on Thursday.