Longueuil to proceed with reduction of deer herd

The city of Longueuil announced on Tuesday that it will be pushing ahead with its plan to reduce the deer herd in Michel-Chartrand Park.

The decision comes on the heels of a Superior Court decision Tuesday rejecting a call to stop Longueuil from culling the deer herd. Last week the animal rights organization Sauvetage Animal Rescue had gone to Superior Court, with their lawyer Anne-France Goldwater arguing that the court should delay the City’s plan to reduce the size of the herd.

Longueuil’s plan to reduce the herd will push ahead but the city isn’t releasing any details of that plan right now, like the dates of the closing of the park and the other things that will have to be done to achieve the reduction of the number of deer. These details will be announced at a later date, before hunting season.

Goldwater had argued that Longueuil had shown bad faith in the case, trying to fool the population and Superior Court by trying to go ahead with the culling of the herd rather than waiting for the court to rule on the matter.

The city has said it has to reduce the number of deer because because they were degrading the ecosystem of the park. A committee made up of of citizens and experts had spent six months assessing the state of Michel-Chartrand Park and the committee came to the conclusion that the site’s ecosystem was “so degraded it can no longer regenerate.”

Factors in the park’s deterioration included an invasion of various species of vegetation not native to the site, an infestation of emerald ash borer beetles, an increase in human traffic and subsequent spike in violations of park regulations and an overpopulation of the deer so marked the herd is malnourished because there is no longer enough vegetation to feed them.

This February, the city said it would delay the euthanasia operation until the fall. Then in June, it said it would wait until the Superior Court ruled on the case.

This summer the city decided that the situation was so urgent that it would have to begin culling the herd.

In July, Longueuil said they were planning a controlled hunt with crossbows in the autumn to kill most of the deer living in the park. The city said it felt it had to act because the deer population increased by close to 50 per cent over the last year.

1. Longueuil to proceed with 'urgent' cull of deer herd in Michel-Chartrand Park

2. Animal welfare advocates ask court to stop Longueuil deer cull