(Montreal) Quebec caribou populations, severely disrupted by human activities, continue to decline, according to new inventories released Monday by the Department of Environment, Combating Climate Change, Wildlife and Parks.
Posted at 11:04 am
Stéphane Blais The Canadian Press
The Canadian Press consulted caribou inventories conducted in 2021 and 2022 in the Gaspésie, Nord-du-Québec and Côte-Nord regions, and in all three regions populations continue to decline, mainly due to habitat destruction. Only Caniapiscau’s caribou population would increase.
The Ministry carried out these inventories using planes, helicopters, cameras deployed on the territory and, in some cases, thanks to telemetric surveillance with GPS collars.
Caribou “Bustard” and “Caniapiscau”
The “Outardes” populations refer to several herds of forest caribou living in the Côte-Nord and Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean regions, and the department estimates that their total number would be between 803 and 1180, “distributed among 67 Groups from 1 to 85 people”.
This number is “falling” and “below the thresholds that one can hope for the population to be self-sufficient”.
How are these populations declining? This is difficult to ascertain, according to the Director General of Coordination of Wildlife Management at the Ministry of the Environment.
“This is the first survey we’ve done of this exact scale and range. Before that, we didn’t have such an accurate sample, so it’s difficult to make reliable comparisons,” explained Carl Patenaude-Levasseur of The Canadian Press.
However, the ministry assumes an “average population decline of 11% per year”.
According to inventory documents, the main habitat disturbances of this caribou population are logging roads, logging, and burning.
In these areas, the logging industry has removed much of the old growth forest and replaced it with younger trees, depriving the caribou of habitat and food. In addition, forest trails encourage the movement of caribou’s natural predators such as bears and wolves.
According to the Department of the Environment, “low abundance south of the 51st parallel poses a risk of local extinction for groups of caribou found in the south of the species’ North Shore range.”
The only good news is that further north in the area, 329 caribou of the Caniapiscau population have been recorded, but inventors estimate their actual size may be 484 individuals.
The area surveyed at the end of winter 2022 represented only 8.2% of the range of this population, but there are enough data for the Department to estimate that this population, which lives partially in protected areas, is “growing”.
The Nottaway Herd
In the North-du-Québec region, data from the aerial surveys conducted by the ministry’s teams allow the population of forest caribou in the Nottaway herd to be estimated at 282 individuals, compared to 308 in 2016.
The population decline could therefore amount to 8% in six years. But scientific models using satellite telemetry provide much more pessimistic estimates.
This leads the Department to state that “the exact extent of this decline is difficult to ascertain with certainty” and “it is possible to estimate that population abundance may have fallen by the order of 8% to 28% over the past six years. »
The Nottoway Caribou Study Area extends into the traditional area of the James Bay Crees: from the vicinity of Matagami in the south to near the Rupert River in the north and the Harricana River in the west to Lakes Evans, Soscumica and Matagami in the east .
A total of 39 groups of caribou were located during the survey and the groups varied in size from 1 to 21 individuals.
The ministry estimates that the survival rate is 81% for females and 71% for males, which “remains relatively low for both segments of the adult population and will therefore require particular attention over the next few years to identify any potential problem.”
Gaspésie mountain caribou
Gaspésie’s mountain caribou live in the Chic Chocs and McGerrigle mountains. This population was designated as a threatened species in Quebec in 2009.
“It’s an extremely vulnerable, isolated population,” said Carl Patenaude-Levasseur.
“We saw 33 in 2021 compared to 42 the year before” using “the same methods, suggesting some rate of decline.”
The fall 2021 inventory, conducted with an aerial survey and the deployment of 74 cameras, was conducted in three sectors: Mounts Albert, McGerrigle and Logan.
“The high mortality rate of calves from predation, the relatively high mortality rate of adults, the small population size, the lack of exchanges within the population due to territorial fragmentation and the lack of preferred non-fragmented habitats threaten the preservation of this population,” we can read in the documents of the Read ministry inventories.
The researchers also point out that a recent study shows that the area of habitats of black bears and coyotes, caribou predators, “within a 30 km radius of the legal habitat of Gaspé caribou has increased over the past 30 years “. It also notes that “the transformation of the forest landscape may have contributed to increasing predation pressure on the caribou, particularly the calves”.
The Quebec Forest Caribou Recovery Team estimated that between 5,635 and 9,981 caribou remained on the territory over the period 2005-2016.
However, these estimates no longer correspond to reality and ongoing inventories in several regions of Quebec will provide a clearer picture of the extent of this emblematic animal’s decline.
The Department of Environment, Climate Action, Wildlife and Parks plans to “deliver the forest dweller and mountain caribou strategy” in the summer of 2023.