Association Memphré-Rural
Biodiversity
If District-6 persists within Magog, the indigenous ecology will indeed continue to be neglected. The picture has been deteriorating for several years. The future is not very promising.
Biodiversity is a vast and complex subject.
It is composed of multiple components essential to the well-being of our community, and its environment. Among the most important are the environment, and the dynamic occupation of agricultural land as well as any type of protection from land speculation.
And yet in Magog, apart from a few reassuring declarations, biodiversity barely figures in the program, and even less on the ground. The city of Magog is too occupied with the typical needs of a developing city: housing, services, employment growth, recreational activities, tourist accommodation, businesses and industries, and providing the accompanying infrastructure.
Still without an updated urban Plan, and after years of improvisation, poorly controlled expansion was inevitable, at the expense of the rural environment. In the city, the last tracts of forests and wetlands have disappeared one by one. Protection of the indigenous rural ecology has been crushed by the pressure of commercial and industrial interests.
Meanwhile, increased property values bring in increased revenue far in excess of inflation, resulting in further spending and borrowing by urban Magog, presenting a spiral with no end in sight.
Extract from a CREE bulletin
(Estrie Regional Environmental Council) about Quebec’s 2030 Nature Plan
Biodiversity consists of animals, landscapes, ecological processes (photosynthesis, decomposition of matter, etc.), interactions between living beings. Biodiversity is the basis of what constitutes the life of our planet!
In good health, it guarantees the quality of our agriculture, the purity of our water and air and many other services. But above all, it makes our planet livable.
For several years, however, biodiversity has been in decline due to numerous human pressures. Three-quarters of the earth's surface is impacted by human activity and 1 million species are threatened with extinction or will soon become so.
Estrie has a rich and diverse biodiversity in habitats and flora and fauna species. However, 32 wildlife species and 67 plant species are at risk (CDNPQ, 2021).
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The NGO Equiterre also confirms the importance of safeguarding our precious nurturing planet; “...Agricultural land is the foundation of our food and well-being, but it is threatened globally by unsustainable practices and increasing urbanization. In Quebec, the situation is critical: the disappearance of arable land, pollution and the use of agricultural land for purposes other than growing food, jeopardize our ability to locally produce the food we need.."
It is therefore also around this vital issue of biodiversity that District-6 wishes to assert its difference - its rurality - by exploring the range of possibilities it offers us, as well as the protection strategies essential to the good health of the natural environment and its occupants.
Doing it by joining the neighboring municipality of Canton de Stanstead - already a supporter of this approach - seems natural to us and a guarantee of success. Especially since the said approach would significantly strengthen the effectiveness of protection of Lake Lovering as a whole, as well as a longer coastline of Lake Memphremagog.
Doing it in the spirit of Quebec's 2030 Nature Plan would make us model Estriens.
District-6 choice is clear: stop harming biodiversity.
T o g e t h e r f o r a r u r a l f u t u r e
h a r m o n i o u s a n d p r o s p e r o u s