The City of Longueuil killed 64 white-tailed deer in Michel-Chartrand Park between October 22 and 24, 2024, beginning a population-control programme after years of protests and court challenges. Officials said overbrowsing threatened the park’s ecology and that the herd far exceeded the site’s estimated carrying capacity.
The population problem
Longueuil said as many as 114 deer lived in a park it estimated could support about 15. Concentrated browsing can prevent young trees and understory plants from regenerating, changing habitat for other species.
Carrying capacity is an ecological and management estimate, not a perfectly fixed number. It depends on vegetation, park goals, disease, weather and interactions with surrounding urban areas.
How the first phase was conducted
Professional hunters used air rifles while the park was closed to the public. Security controlled access, and the city said the first phase proceeded smoothly.
The provincial permit remained valid until February 2025, and officials planned additional work. At the moment of the 64-deer report, the operation was not complete.
Years of legal opposition
The city had attempted to reduce the herd since 2020 but faced organized opposition and litigation from animal-rights advocates. Quebec’s Court of Appeal sided with Longueuil in October 2023, allowing the planned cull to proceed.
A court decision resolved the city’s legal authority under the issues before it; it did not require every resident to agree that killing was the most ethical wildlife-management choice.
Alternatives and trade-offs
Opponents promoted relocation or fertility control. Relocation can cause capture stress, mortality, disease-transfer concerns and difficulty finding an authorized receiving habitat. Fertility programmes may require repeated treatment and time before numbers decline.
Culling produces an immediate reduction but causes irreversible harm to animals and can generate public distress. A defensible plan compares feasibility, welfare, ecological effect, cost and the likelihood that population pressure will return.
Use of the animals
Longueuil said inspected meat would be donated through a local food bank by year-end. Later reporting said the full operation ended after 105 deer were killed and nearly 13,000 portions had been donated, with hides and antlers provided to Indigenous communities for craft uses.
Donation reduced waste but did not settle the ethical debate. Food handling and distribution still required applicable inspection and safety controls.
Preventing another cycle
Mayor Catherine Fournier said the city needed a durable solution so another cull would not be necessary. Monitoring, habitat management, public education and limits on intentional or accidental feeding could form part of that work.
The first 64 deaths were one stage in a long dispute between animal welfare and ecological restoration. Accurate coverage needed to acknowledge both the city’s evidence of overpopulation and the moral objection to lethal control. The final measure of policy would be whether the park recovered and whether the city kept deer numbers from again reaching a crisis that offered only difficult choices.
Independent ecological monitoring could document vegetation recovery, future herd size and unintended effects. Publishing those results would allow residents to judge whether the intervention achieved the purpose used to justify it and whether non-lethal measures could maintain the population afterward.
