Abstract
A few studies have explored this topic including: Bois-Charlebois, M. (2018). Les défis de la compensation écologique des impacts sur les milieux humides dans le nord du Québec: Étude de cas en territoire Cri.
They have argued that existing regulations on ecological compensation often advocate compensating wetland impacts with measures that pertain only to wetlands, with little consideration of variations in different ecosystems or the particularities of users of the affected site.
Laws and regulations in Quebec are more applicable in the southern part of the province, where many wetlands have been destroyed, but less so in northern regions where wetlands are not under threat.
We believe that wetland compensation based on ecosystem services would better address the environmental and social particularities of Northern Quebec.
Bois-Charlebois have concluded that in order to better meet the ecological and socioeconomic compensation objectives in a territory where wetlands are numerous, the following criteria are proposed. We have put that into practice in the development of the wetland compensation program for the Rose Mining Project:
- Avoid jeopardizing an environment that is rarer than the one destroyed (i.e. in the case of the Rose Mine, advocate the creation of wetlands that are less well represented in the study area);
- Consult with affected users and compensate by maintaining or restoring lost, scarce or declining ecosystem services (i.e. in this case, consult with the Cree communities to confirm valued wetland functions to be compensated);
- Consider the territory at the local and regional scale (in the case of the Rose Mine, start from the study area and broaden the scope of representation);
- Aim for no net loss of biodiversity (i.e. create environments that provide multiple habitat functions);
- Ecosystem services that are difficult or impossible to compensate for with natural elements should be the subject of additional conservation actions (such as a conservation protocol in James Bay for these rarer functions).
What is proposed here is to take into consideration the representativeness of the ecological, socio-cultural and economic functions of the wetlands in the study area and beyond, and to use them in conjunction with the importance given to these functions by the Cree communities affected by the project, in order to formulate a compensation strategy that is more appropriate to the Northern reality. In this case, the compensation ratio could be adjusted according to the rarity and importance of the functions created.
In the study area and the region, bogs and their functions dominate. They cover a surface area 900-fold larger than fens, 1,200-fold larger than ponds and 29-fold larger than swamps and marshes.
Wetlands and function favoured by neighbouring Cree communities (from literature but to be confirmed early in 2023), include: 1.Canada geese and its habitat: corresponding to ponds; 2. Moose and its habitat: corresponding to swamps; 3. Beaver and its habitat: corresponding to ponds and swamps.