It’s Canadian Environment Week! This annual event is a time to help preserve, protect and restore the environment. To celebrate the environmental progress our country has made, there are two environmental themes featured each day of this week. One of today’s theme’s is Wildlife so we wanted to take the opportunity to share a story from our 2015 Sustainable Development Report about Agnico Eagle and Canadian Malartic partnering with the Quebec government to protect and save the population of woodland caribou that inhabit the Val-d’Or area of Quebec.

Quebec’s Ministry of Forest, Fauna and Parks is the lead partner in this effort to save the woodland caribou of Val d’Or. The goal is to ensure that the females are not vulnerable to predation while they give birth and also to help protect the fawns and increase their survival rate. In order to do this the pregnant females are captured and transported into a pen at a local biodiversity reserve where they can give birth without being exposed to predators like wolves. The newborn caribou and their mothers are then released back into their natural habitat a couple of months later.

Since 2014, a total of five fawns were released into their natural habitat with their mothers with the hope that the local population can eventually grow to at least 20 caribou. The long-term goal is to build the herd up to 50 caribou. While the Ministry contributes primarily its expertise and human resources to the initiative, Agnico Eagle has to date, made annual contributions of $20,000 to protect and grow the woodland caribou herd of Val-d’Or. Canadian Malartic also added an additional $30,000 in 2015.