The closure of the provincial wildlife protection office in Campbell’s Bay is raising concerns about weakening on-the-ground enforcement across the Pontiac region.
The office closed at the start of March after Quebec’s environment ministry chose not to renew its lease at 1290 Hwy. 148. Ministry spokesperson Ève Morin Desrosiers said the decision was made “with the goal of healthy management of provincial resources.”
Desrosiers said that in recent years the office had been reduced to a single part-time administrative employee. She said responsibility for the territory will now shift to the ministry’s southwest district office, which covers both the Outaouais and Laurentides regions and employs 51 staff, including 42 wildlife protection officers.
Environmental crimes such as poaching, overfishing and illegal dumping can harm wildlife populations and disrupt ecosystems. According to the Quebec government, illegal activities interfere with sustainable wildlife management and threaten both species and their habitats, while pollution and invasive species can degrade water quality, spread disease and further destabilize ecosystems.
According to the Quebec government, wildlife protection officers are important to preventing these outcomes. Their work consists of working to track down poachers, carrying out protection and prevention measures for threatened wildlife species, and ensuring natural habitats are not destroyed.
Martin Perreault, president of Quebec’s wildlife protection agents’ union, said the Campbell’s Bay closure reflects a broader trend of consolidating services in urban centres. Over the past year, offices in Bas-Saint-Laurent and Gaspésie have also shut down in favour of centralized operations.
The Outaouais region once had wildlife protection offices in both Rapides-des-Joachims and Campbell’s Bay. Now, Perreault said, agents covering the more than 50,000-square-kilometre territory are based in Gatineau, Maniwaki and as far away as Saint-Jérôme.
He said the shift leaves the Outaouais with less effective surveillance.
“They are saying to the population, ‘Even if there’s no one locally, it doesn’t matter – we have about 50 agents in the district who can cover the territory.’ But that’s not true,” Perreault said. “Agents in Saint-Jérôme will not be able to cover Campbell’s Bay.”
Bill Boisvert, president of ZEC St-Patrice, said response times were much faster when officers were based locally. “The same afternoon they were in the bush,” he said.
Now, he said, it can be harder to get officers on-site. “Sometimes we would call Maniwaki, and Maniwaki couldn’t come because it was too busy.”
Desrosiers wrote in a statement that the environment ministry deploys officers “at the right time and in the right place,” and that advanced technologies allow for more targeted interventions. “The ministry aims to maintain strong, efficient and agile teams of wildlife protection officers to meet operations needs, ensure effective interventions and carry out its mandate to protect wildlife,” the statement reads in part.
CBC News and Radio-Canada have reported concerns that the Campbell’s Bay office closure could lead to increased poaching on the territory, a concern that is also shared by Boisvert. But he said he is already seeing gaps in enforcement for illegal hunting.
“We haven’t got enough game wardens,” he said, adding that he has seen a decline of officers on the territory since he started working at the ZEC around 15 years ago.
Desrosiers said that reports of illegal activities received through the SOS Poaching / Wildlife Emergency phone line are processed within a maximum of 24 hours, and that reports involving nuisance wildlife requiring urgent, immediate action are handled within a maximum of one hour.
“When a report is received at the SOS Poaching – Wildlife Emergency call centre, it is assessed based on several factors to determine the appropriate response. These include the nature of the report (such as poaching or the presence of a nuisance animal), the level of risk to public safety, and whether an on-the-ground intervention is required,” the statement reads.
Perreault said while poaching may increase as a result, it may not show up in the official data because there will be no officers on the ground to see it. He said people may feel discouraged to call in an act of poaching if they know there is a long response time.
“The poaching could be increasing, but if we look at the statistics we won’t be able to see it,” he said. “If the population knows that we may not be able to help, people are going to give up calling us.”
