No hunting ban on island of Montreal
Quebec is refusing to ban hunting on the island of Montreal, even though common sense says the island is urbanized enough for the practice to be hazardous.
In tangentially related news, an ethics committee has listed a lot of objections to Longueuil’s plan to move 14 white-tailed deer away from Michel-Chartrand park, where the species has been judged too numerous.
Even more tangentially, citizen groups are trying to preserve the few wooded areas on and just off the West Island which have not yet been declared parks.
Blork 22:33 on 2021-02-18 Permalink
The Longueuil deer thing is tough, because reducing their numbers is absolutely the right thing to do. But if you go into that park on any kind of a regular basis you become rather attached to them. They’re like puppies, especially when they’re standing right next to you and looking you right in the eye. A few days ago I counted 34 of them on my 40-minute walk, about a third of which were close enough to poke with a stick.
The park authorities are pretty strict about people not feeding them, but they also don’t want you to feed the birds. Who doesn’t love having chickadees and nuthatches landing on your hand? Unfortunately their finger-wagging about feeding the birds sort of discredits their position on the deer, because they come off as being too strict and no fun at all, and people end up ignoring everything they say.
John B 09:30 on 2021-02-19 Permalink
The deer thing bothers me for other reasons. I work on managing some community gardens in Verdun, and there are plenty of groundhogs that eat the vegetables, but we’re not allowed to trap & move them because the wildlife protection laws say it’s more or les forbidden to trap & move animals, (there are lots of good reasons not to move animals, including they’ll probably die anyway and it’s a way diseases move around). Reading between the lines the law suggests that if someone does need to deal with problem animals they should be killed.
But then I see Longueuil has been feeding the wildlife, created a problem for itself, and is getting permission to move animals that don’t destroy food people eat, while we’re stuck trying to put nets around veggies to save them.
Basically, I think Longueuil made its bed so it should have to lie in it. The wildlife laws are not new.
Ephraim 09:36 on 2021-02-19 Permalink
@John – Tried spraying with fox pee? Or rotten eggs on the plants? It’s how I managed to get the squirrels to stop eating my flowers. The fox pee keeps them away. The rotten egg taste keeps them from eating plants. It does smell for a day or two, but after that, the taste is on the leaves.
walkerp 10:19 on 2021-02-19 Permalink
Or set up a hipster locally-sourced marmot bistro/boutique where you sell slow-cooked marmot tacos and retro marmot fur cache-cous.
Blork 10:40 on 2021-02-19 Permalink
John B., where did you hear that “Longueuil is feeding the wildlife?” AFAIK it’s the opposite, as there are notices all over the place to not feed the wildlife, not even the birds. And the problem with the deer is they’re wrecking the ecosystem of the park because they are eating all the new growth, so the forest can’t regenerate.
Kate 10:56 on 2021-02-19 Permalink
walkerp, that is genius.
Blork, I’ve seen references to how Longueuil has fed the deer. At a quick google, here’s a CP piece (from Kelowna, but that’s just the link that showed up) saying “The City of Longueuil acknowledged that it fed the deer in past winters in the hopes of stopping them from wandering onto roads and getting killed. It reduced the feeding in 2015 and stopped it in 2017 as knowledge of best practices evolved.”
Blork 11:03 on 2021-02-19 Permalink
Well, look at that. At least they’ve learned and have stopped doing it. And now they need to solve the problem they created.
MarcG 11:25 on 2021-02-19 Permalink
@walkerp Can I get a pint of Fox Piss IPA with that?
Meezly 14:37 on 2021-02-19 Permalink
“.. citizen groups are trying to preserve the few wooded areas on and just off the West Island which have not yet been declared parks.”
I’m sure conservationists will be kept busy as people continue to flee the city for ‘greener pastures’, not realizing they’re inadvertently contributing to the accelerated loss of wooded areas.
John B 19:21 on 2021-02-19 Permalink
@Blork: I was referring to how they were fed in the past. The feeding has been stopped, but the effects linger.
@Ephraim: I haven’t tried fox pee. I have used a pepper-based repellent that seemed to work. A problem is that it’s a community garden, right by the bike path, so we can’t put anything too stinky in it. It can also get quite expensive if we try to do the whole community garden. For now we’ll work on better fences, at least, so groundhogs are either in or out and not going in & out.
Then, when we have a BBQ, we may have to get some tortillas… Especially since it’s legal to hunt them, apparently.