In April 2022, Canadians learned that the federal government was considering issuing an ordinance to protect the critical caribou habitat in Quebec. This unprecedented measure, set by Canada’s Species and Risk Act, aims to prevent an increasingly dramatic decline of an emblematic animal species living in our boreal lands.
A few decades ago, the caribou was doing well …
We are June 12, 1966.
Radio-Canada television broadcast an episode of the show that day Hunting and fishing in the province of Quebec shot in the Lower North Shore region of Quebec. Serge Deyglun is the narrator.
In this passage, the film crew says that the caribou population is very large in this region.
In 2002, 36 years after the broadcast of this report, Ottawa enacted the Species and Risk Act and designated caribou as an endangered species that the Canadian government should protect.
The province of Quebec recognized the weak cervid in 2005.
What happened in just four decades?
Then, a dangerous decline began…
The contrast between 1966 and our time is striking.
Statistics confirm the overall decline of the caribou herd in almost all of its range in Quebec.
In the 1990s, there were 1.3 million caribou in the province.
By 2020, this population will drop to 200,000 animals.
They are concentrated near Ungava Bay in northern Quebec and in the Torngat Mountains on the borders of Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador.
The woodland caribou, which live close to places where people live, has no more than 8,000 animals.
Some of the caribou forest herds are almost gone.
This is the case near Val-d’Or in Abitibi, Charlevoix and Gaspésie.
It was in the 1990s, as this report by journalist Jacques Rivard, presented in Newscast on December 28, 1994 and led by Solveig Miller, the Canadian government considered expropriating parts of Quebec’s territory to preserve certain species.
The prospect of implementing the unilateral federal plan has triggered a jurisdictional battle between the Canadian and Quebec governments.
Ottawa encourages Quebec’s delay in species protection to justify its intervention.
Quebec’s Minister of the Environment, Jacques Brassard, acknowledged this delay.
But in the same breath, he affirms that Quebec has the tools to act and politely urges federal authorities to “think of its own business”.
… Caused by human activity
” These animals have become symbols of biodiversity for ecologists to protect. But for others, it is an obstacle to the region’s economic development. And if Quebec is hoping for the forest industry, the pressure is rising for Ottawa to intervene in favor of caribou. “
On May 22, 2018, journalist Emmanuelle Latraverse presented a report on Telejournal.
He went to Val-d’Or to understand the reasons for the virtual loss of woodland caribou in Abitibi.
The extinction of the deer would be a tragedy according to scientists consulted by the journalist.
The professor of animal biology at the University of Quebec at Rimouski, Martin-Hugues St-Laurent, compared it to “a canary in the mine”.
Its caught disappearance illustrates the fate of other species, he insisted, and confirms that territorial management is inadequate.
Flying into this corner of Abitibi, the journalist will only come to one conclusion.
It is a set of human activities that put caribou at risk.
The construction of chalets, hunting camps and roads for recreational vehicles, gradually, the animal domain is shrinking like a drop.
But, there is another big culprit.
The forest industry thrives on the old forests where the caribou live.
Politicians are often asked to choose between jobs and respect for biodiversity.
Caribou is almost always the loser in this trade-off.
On May 22, 2018, host Anne-Marie Dussault of 24/60 presents, as an introduction to an interview he conducted with Henri Jacob, president of the Action boréale group, an excerpt from a speech by the Premier of Quebec Philippe Couillard.
The message from the head of the Quebec government was as follows.
Between caribou protection and jobs, he chooses the latter.
Henri Jacob laments this attitude and emphasizes the province’s reluctance to save the species.
In 2019 and 2021, the Quebec government delayed the implementation of a caribou habitat protection strategy.
A possible Ottawa intervention in this file could mean the establishment of a protected area of several thousand square kilometers to regenerate the herds.
Source: Radio-Canada
