Slaughtering animals whose numbers are considered too numerous is prosaically called “regulation”. If this does not move the crowds when it comes to rats or even pigeons, the emotion is greater when we apply this rule to wild boars, as is the case in France, or to deer, as is the case in Quebec (Canada). In Longueuil, near Montreal, a legal battle lasting almost four years has just been lost by animal defenders against the town hall. The challenge was to prevent the city from culling part of the deer herd living in a huge municipal park.
Why does the city of Longueuil want to slaughter deer?
It was a project in the cards of the former mayor which remained in the priorities of the new mayor, Catherine Fournier, when she was elected in 2021. It is a “livestock reduction operation” which should make it possible to “restore the ecological balance of Michel-Chartrand Park”. In this vast urban park of almost 6 km in circumference, around thirty deer lived in 2020. At the time, the city wanted to “capture and euthanize around fifteen”.
Difficult to enclose due to its size, the park is open to the city. According to Jonathan Tabarah, municipal councilor, an overpopulation of deer poses “road safety issues inherent to the surroundings of the park”. He adds, to justify the use of regulation, that the excessive number of deer contributes to “the state of the Michel-Chartrand park continuing to deteriorate rapidly”.
What ignited the powder?
If there is one point that everyone agrees on, it is that we must control the population of deer inhabiting the park. On the other hand, it is over the method that animal rights activists and town halls clash. According to the city, several options were studied by the Michel-Chartrand Park Concertation Table. “The only viable option in the short term to obtain lasting results is to proceed from 2022 to reducing the size of the herd by a method of capture and euthanasia in order to reach the support capacity of the park,” concluded the report.
“There was a first catastrophic attempt with hunters equipped with crossbows,” recalls Dominique, a park regular contacted by 20 minutes. “In panic, deer fled into the city with arrows in their bodies,” she adds. It was the images of this fiasco that ignited the powder and triggered the legal proceedings, led by residents and by the Sauvetage animal rescue association. However, opponents of the deer cull have proposed alternatives to city hall. “We had worked on a plan to move the deer, one member even wanted to collect them in his domain. There was also the solution of a sterilization vaccine,” explains Dominique, specifying that in one or the other case, the financing was taken care of by the associations. In vain.
What is the situation today ?
Four years later, it is no longer around fifteen deer that the city must slaughter, but nearly 80, the animals having had plenty of time to reproduce due to the lack of a sterilization campaign. The municipality counts 117, the associations 67. After its victory in appeal against animal defenders, the city is rejoicing and its mayor assures that “our teams will continue the work”. In the coming days, the deer regulation plan will be presented to residents for implementation from January.
Legally, the game seems to be over, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Maître Anne-France Goldwater, having decided not to appeal to the Court of Cassation. “As soon as they start the slaughter, we will be on the ground and take photos like we did in 2020, to show how cruel a method it is,” says Dominique. According to her, physical opposition to hunting is not a planned option.
According to deer defenders, the city will therefore hire hunters to do the work, “and butchers to give the meat to low-income families,” they explain. This is what the Société des establishments de plein air du Québec did last week, when it carried out the slaughter of 400 deer in two national parks.