After years of waiting and several postponements, the Legault government should finally announce elements of its woodland caribou protection strategy shortly. Efforts should initially focus on populations on the verge of extinction, while the federal government has set an ultimatum to Quebec for the unveiling of measures intended to prevent the disappearance of the species in the province.
According to information first reported by Radio-Canada on Tuesday, the details of a plan including various measures would be submitted this Wednesday to the Legault government’s council of ministers. The office of the Minister of the Environment, Benoit Charette, however, did not want to confirm Tuesday evening Duty the upcoming submission of a strategy.
This would in fact be a first step toward developing a strategy that should, in theory, prevent the extinction of the province’s 13 caribou herds. Radio-Canada obtained details of this plan and The duty was able to confirm certain information.
The government would thus implement measures to better protect the habitat of the Gaspésie caribou, a population which today amounts to around thirty animals.
The situation of this population is so dramatic that the government attempted, last winter and this winter, operations to capture pregnant females in order to give birth to the fawns in captivity, which would protect them from predation during their first months of life. life. In 2023, the results were zero. As for the 2024 results regarding catches, it is still not known.
In order to better preserve the habitat essential to the survival of this so-called “mountain” caribou, the government could add protection measures outside the limits of the Gaspésie national park, since individuals leave this protected territory, particularly during winter. In 2020, the Legault government, however, ruled out a protected area project, called “Vallières de Saint-Réal”, which could have played this role. And the recreational tourism industry is demanding access to more territory, which could come into conflict with caribou habitat.
Charlevoix caribou
The Legault government is also working on measures to try to save the herd in the Charlevoix region, which has been living in captivity since 2022. When the Charlevoix caribou were captured, 16 individuals were placed in enclosures. Births, however, brought this number to 31 animals.
These first elements of the government plan would therefore not concern, for the moment, all caribou herds, even if most are today in precarious, even critical situations. According to a recent international scientific study, industrial logging carried out in Quebec over tens of thousands of square kilometers has seriously disrupted the habitats necessary for the survival of the woodland caribou. Result: 11 of the 13 populations in the province are today at “risk” of extinction.
This leads the general director of the Society for Nature and Parks of Quebec, Alain Branchaud, to say that the federal government should intervene now to impose, by decree, “targeted” protection measures. He cites as an example the urgency of protecting the Pipmuacan herd. The Innu have been calling for several years for measures to save this central species in their culture.
It must be said that the deer is more threatened than ever in this region exploited by the forestry industry, where the Legault government has already rejected a protected area project which had been developed in order to preserve forest areas essential to the preservation of the herd. This included barely 225 animals, at best, during the most recent inventory, carried out in 2020 over a territory of more than 28,000 km2. “The population is in an extremely precarious state and its capacity for self-sufficiency is unlikely under current conditions,” the government experts concluded.
Ultimatum to 1er may
Alain Branchaud nevertheless welcomes the idea of the Legault government to finally move forward with elements of its forest caribou protection strategy. According to him, the idea of developing pilot protection projects in certain regions should make it possible to demonstrate that it is possible to protect the species, but also forestry, an industry which, according to him, must learn to evolve in a context of protection. biodiversity and the fight against the climate crisis.
Concerned by the “extremely precarious situation” of the woodland caribou and the absence of a plan to rescue this endangered species in Quebec, the federal Minister of the Environment, Steven Guilbeault, demanded last month the publication of the strategy promised since several years by the Legault government by the 1er may. In the event of refusal, Ottawa could decree protective measures. Such a gesture, unprecedented on the part of the federal government, could add more than 35,000 km2 of protected habitats for deer.
In its report published in 2022, the Independent Commission on Forest and Mountain Caribou — set up by the Legault government — raised the “urgency to act” in the matter and recommended the creation of new protected areas.
With François Carabin