Small mammals:
Data on the species distribution of small mammals was kindly provided
by the Ministère de l'Environnement et de la Faune, Service de la faune
terrestre. This data has been compiled over the last 4 years and comes
from many different sources, including capture records and museum databases.
Since the collection of small mammal data is an on-going effort, the
distributions shown in these maps don't give the full picture. Distribution
data is still scarce for central and northern Quebec. As well, because
of the nature of the data, one cannot account for "false negatives".
In other words, if there are no accounts of a species for a given area,
we don't know whether this is because it is not found there or because
we haven't looked for it there.
Thus, it is helpful to view
these maps as an approximation of small mammal distribution in southern
Quebec. Quebec MEF is currently preparing to publish an atlas of small
mammals for Quebec. For more information on this upcoming resource,
see Morin, 1997.
Large
mammals: Data on the distribution of large game mammals was
provided by the Ministère de l'Environnement et de la Faune, Service
de la faune terrestre. Information on large mammals in Quebec
is gathered from harvesting or mortality records collected by the government.
Although the government has been collecting this data since 1971, we
have mapped only distributions based on 1997 records. As with the small
mammal data, this data is not based on systematic sampling but on observation
records and is, therefore, subject to the same limitations: these represent
only an approximation of the actual distribution of large mammals and
we cannot account for "false negatives" in the data.
The mammal species list was
based on Prescott
and Caron, 1982.
