This article was first published on APTN News.
An influx of out-of-province moose hunters is creating serious problems for Kebaowek First Nation, an Algonquin community located in western Quebec, Canada, near the border of Ontario.
According to Pascal Bibeau, the problem is made worse by the fact that the government of Quebec doesn’t understand the problem.
“It’s like saying in Quebec City, ‘There’s a fire,’ and they say, ‘That’s no big deal, it’s just nine houses. We have millions of houses in Quebec,’” Bibeau told APTN News. “But here, houses are burning.”
For Bibeau, director of land and resource management for Kebaowek First Nation, the burning houses represent what he said is a vast and untenable number of moose hunters entering Kebaowek’s traditional territory from Ontario, as well as from the United States.
He’s impatient with those who suggest that measured across the entirety of Quebec, there aren’t that many out-of-province sport hunters.
“Yeah,” he said, “but they’re all here.”
Kebaowek is located above Algonquin Park, almost due north from Barrie, Ont. It’s less than a five hour drive from both Toronto and Ottawa, two and a half hours from Sudbury, and 45 minutes from North Bay.
Though there are no official numbers available about sport-hunters from outside of Quebec, Bibeau says anecdotal reports all underline the same themes.
“Large numbers are coming in from Ontario,” he said. “This is a phenomenon we haven’t seen before. They’re not at home. They have less respect for the territory. We see a lot of trash left in the forest by non-residents. They have less ethics than hunters who are Indigenous and non-Indigenous who have been on the land for generations and tend to respect the land and its resources.”
He noted reports of groups of eight or ten hunters arriving from Ontario together.
“We see thousands of them here,” he stressed. “One phenomenon we see is that we park at the entrance to forest roads a few days before the hunt opens, and we see almost more Ontario licence plates on pickup trucks than Quebec licence plates.”
The issue of sport and non-Indigenous hunters is top of mind in Bloodvein First Nation in Manitoba. That community has banned non-Indigenous people from hunting moose in its traditional territory following what it calls years of overhunting that have stretched the community’s access to traditional foods.
Last year, BFN Chief Lisa Young told APTN, the community of 1,200 was only able to harvest a single moose for its residents to share.
The decision to restrict non-Indigenous hunters has been a flashpoint for criticism that has expanded since the Manitoba government amended the Wildlife Act to formally create a hunting buffer zone around the areas of BFN territory in question.
Representatives of the Manitoba Wildlife Federation as well as the Manitoba Lodges and Outfitters Association have been vocal in their rejection of the buffer zone, which they’ve characterized as impulsive and potentially hurting businesses.
But in Kebaowek, the conflict isn’t between First Nations and non-Indigenous hunters. In fact, Bibeau was quick to say there is already a firmly established balance between those two groups, each of whom seems to understand the other.
“We have people here who practically hunt together,” Bibeau said. “There is good neighborliness between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Then the Ontario hunters come in. They don’t know the people here. They go everywhere. They invade traditional Indigenous hunting grounds.”
He noted the Ontario hunter problem has its roots in Quebec City, the capital of Quebec. The province is in the midst of consultations with First Nations and non-Indigenous stakeholders ahead of developing a new moose-management program.
The last such plan expired in 2024, and the new one was supposed to appear this year. It has not yet been released, though official consultations continue.
“It’s a necessary evil for the provincial government to hold consultations right now,” Bibeau said, “but we don’t feel that it’s a real consultation. We’re sending our message, but they’re not listening.”
In the meantime, hunters are flowing in from Ontario, a province Bibeau said has far more restrictive controls on moose hunting. When those hunters arrive in Quebec, they need only buy a licence—unlike non-Indigenous Quebec hunters, who must first earn a hunting certification showing they’ve taken weapons courses and learned hunting ethics and best practices.
“Ironically, Ontario hunters can come here without that,” Bibeau said. “They can still buy a licence. And if a local hunter is caught poaching, they lose their hunting certificate, so they can’t go hunting for X number of years. But non-resident hunters don’t have one, so if they’re caught poaching, they just pay the fine. Then, the following year, they’re still here hunting.”
When Kebaowek’s representatives have raised the issue with the provincial government, Bibeau said Quebec doesn’t want to listen.
“They don’t want to hear about stricter regulations for non-residents,” he argued. “There are pressure groups and lobbies working toward that end. And then there’s the money issue. Ontario hunters, non-residents, pay a lot for their licences, and that generates revenue for the province.”
According to the province’s schedule of hunting licence fees, Quebec hunters must pay $88.67 for a licence to hunt moose, while non-resident hunters must pay $587.60 for the same hunting rights.
Shannon Chief, from Barrière Lake Algonquin First Nation, is a member of the Anishnabe Moose Committee, a grassroots organization aiming to manage moose in traditional territories using traditional knowledge. She noted that the La Vérendrye Wildlife Reserve alone has 55 sectors in which hunters may be licensed (though currently there is a moratorium on moose hunting in La Vérendrye due to a low moose population).
“And then you multiply that to all the different sectors in Quebec,” she said, “that’s pretty much a couple of million that they make off the moose.”
Yet that money doesn’t go to local communities, stressed Bibeau. Rather, it all goes to Quebec City. But Kebaowek isn’t angling for a share of revenue.
“Even if they offered us some of the proceeds, or returned part of the money collected from non-residents through the permit system, we would still prefer to have fewer non-residents,” Bibeau said. “We believe that the territory and the resources are no longer able to accommodate so many hunters.”
Territorial Guardians will monitor hunting zones
At the same time as the province is making money from moose, Bibeau said Quebec has also been saving money by closing regional wildlife protection offices. A media report suggested Quebec may have closed or dramatically reduced staffing in 30 of a total 68 such offices throughout the province.
“When there’s poaching, there’s no one to turn to,” he said. “There is a 1-800 number, but it’s in Montreal. So there are no local people.”
One remedy for reduced wildlife protection officers is more eyes on the land. That’s what Chief said her organization has in mind.
A solution the Anishnabe Moose Committee proposes is “territorial guardians,” which are individual members of Algonquin/Anishinaabe First Nations in the west of Quebec who would act as communities’ eyes and ears on the land.
“That’s something that’s been long in the making,” Chief said. “There’s lots of training that needs to be provided yet, but it’s just a start for them to go around the territory to monitor [activities]. We have those guardians to be able to just observe, to report, to monitor, and then build as we go.”
The first of these guardians may be on the land as early as next week, which Chief hopes will balance against the presence of Quebec representatives telling Algonquins what to do on their traditional territory.
As well, she said, “We’re building jobs based on traditional knowledge, but also our ecological knowledge, but also the knowledge that we gain from going to school, college, and all this different stuff.”
However, the Quebec government only works with elected leadership of First Nations. Chief said the province is not interested in the information revealed by organizations of regular people like hers.
“People that want to do something from the grassroots, work with elders, youth, and all these different people, [Quebec] won’t really recognize or see the efforts that we’re doing,” Chief said. “The policy report we did shows that Quebec looked at the numbers and then built a profit off the moose as part of their economy.”
Blocking sport hunters in 2019
Chief recalled her community of Barrière Lake effectively forced Quebec to come to the table on moose in 2019 after a local grandmother blocked an access road with her truck, kicking off a blockade that lasted a month.
“Then that became the setting for every [one] of the camps,” she said, “so all the roads were blocked, and that’s the only way that the Quebec government actually started responding and meeting with our leadership.”
In 2021, Quebec placed a moratorium on moose hunting in the La Vérandrye wildlife preserve, which continues to be in force. Chief said Quebec needs to do much more.
“We need a longer moratorium,” she said, “enough to build a comprehensive report. A full report requires 10 years study.”
For Bibeau, an immediate solution would simply be to limit sport-hunting in Kebaowek’s traditional territory to Algonquin and non-Indigenous locals as well as hunters from Quebec, but the province is unlikely to ban all out-of-province hunters.
A second-tier solution Bibeau suggested is to require all non-Indigenous hunters to work with an outfitter. He said Kebaowek is requesting that outfitters become mandatory in Quebec’s new moose-management plan.
“We have members who own outfitters,” he said. “We have members who are hunting and fishing guides at outfitters. This represents significant economic spinoffs. It would be better oversight. It would limit the number [of hunters on the land].”
Bibeau is not optimistic, however. While he reported continued positive relations with the Ministry’s local and regional representatives, he said the challenge was getting the message across to Quebec City.
“Quebec City is refusing to listen. They don’t want to hear about stricter regulations for non-residents.”
APTN reached out to Quebec’s Ministry of Environment and Wildlife but did not hear back.
By Jesse Staniforth of APTN News.
