The elders say that as children they sat in the trees to count the caribou passing under the branches. Today, the young Anishinabe of the Lac-Simon First Nation — an Algonquin community of 2,300 people planted near Val-d’Or in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, a region in northwestern Quebec — do not know the animal that a nurturing, cultural and spiritual role played for their ancestors, as the colorful design that now serves as the logo of the local Aboriginal organization created in their defense.

The boreal caribou, this broad-snouted deer with narrow antlers, roamed Canada’s northern forests for thousands of years. For twenty years the herd has lost a third of its individuals. It is slowly moving north and now occupies a swath of forest several hundred kilometers high that stretches from Yukon Province to the Newfoundland-Labrador border between the 49th and 49th^e and 55^e Parallels of the north latitude. Despite being listed as an “endangered” species by Canada in 2003 and as an “endangered species” by the Quebec legislature in 2005, the caribou continues its slow extinction: it is more likely to be found on Canadian 25 cent coins, including itself the emblem, only in the forests of the country.

In Quebec, a 2012 census counted only 6,000 to 8,500 people. Herds concentrated in the extreme north of the province and some isolated herds now threatened with extinction. Those of the so-called “mountain” caribou in Gaspésie, “Foresters” in the Massif de Charlevoix northeast of Québec City and finally in the Val-d’Or on the ancestral territory of the Anishinaabes. From this herd of about eighty animals by the 1950s, which declined to about fifty individuals twenty years ago, there are only nine survivors today, five males and four females.

A reduced living space

At the Lac-Simon First Nation Reservation, Ronald Brazeau, in lumberjack shirt, ponytail and cap, spends his time trying to keep this meager herd from being wiped off the map.

In his office as director for the development of natural resources, which he holds within his municipality, he outlines in large strokes on a plaque the history of the Val-d’Or caribou: an area of ​​origin of about 13,000 square kilometers, covered with lakes and dense forests , in which animals found many lichens to feed on. A surface hatched by the native chief with large red lines running north to south and east to west to represent the numerous forest trails that now cross it.

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