Rabies vaccination program for skunks, raccoons in effort to stop spread to Montreal

MONTREAL – The raccoons that roam Montreal’s alleys, parks and backyards are a familiar part of city life. But as raccoon rabies cases mount south and east of Quebec, wildlife officials are making efforts to ensure the deadly virus doesn’t reach them.

Across parts of southern and eastern Quebec, 25 teams of wildlife technicians, professional trappers and animal health specialists are trapping raccoons and skunks, vaccinating them and releasing them back into the wild.

The operation began May 12 and runs until June 23, covering roughly 750 square kilometres. The goal is to create a barrier against the disease before it reaches the Montreal region.

Since the beginning of the year, Quebec has confirmed 71 cases of raccoon rabies and three cases of bat rabies. By comparison, 93 cases of raccoon rabies were recorded during all of 2025.

Quebec’s environment department says the total number of raccoons in the province is unknown.

Earlier this spring, the province distributed 206,000 vaccine baits across a 2,500-square-kilometre area covering 40 municipalities in Montérégie and 15 in Estrie. Another, larger baiting campaign is planned for August.

The provincial environment department said the timing was important because young raccoons born this year are still too small to consume the vaccine baits.

By late summer, they should be large enough to eat the baits and develop immunity, the department told The Canadian Press in an email.

The department also noted that immunity is not transmitted from vaccinated mothers to their offspring through milk.

Quebec is currently dealing with two active raccoon rabies hot spots. The largest is linked to the original introduction when a rabid raccoon crossed into Quebec from Vermont near St-Armand in December 2024. A second cluster was discovered near Stanstead, in Quebec’s Eastern Townships region, in 2025 and remains active.

The provincial government is urging the population to report sightings of animals that appear to be injured, noting that the disease has spread to Mont-St-Hilaire near Montreal’s South Shore and St-Barnabé-Sud, about 60 kilometres east of Montreal. Cases have also been detected in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu after the disease crossed the Richelieu River this spring.

The government has warned that it will have to pursue efforts for several years before raccoon rabies can once again be eliminated from southern Quebec. The World Organisation for Animal Health requires a region to go at least two years without a case before it can be considered free of rabies.

As rabies spreads, residents who come across an injured, orphaned or sick raccoons will find there are fewer places allowed to take the animals in.

The government says animal shelters located in affected areas are not permitted to take care of raccoons because of the risk of spreading rabies.

One shelter owner said she receives daily calls from people who have found injured, orphaned or sick raccoons. The Canadian Press agreed not to identify her because she feared speaking publicly could affect her relationship with wildlife officials.

She said she knows wildlife officials tell the public not to approach sick, injured or dead animals.

But she said she still worries that some people may attempt to care for raccoons on their own without proper knowledge, potentially putting both themselves and the animals at risk.

“We don’t believe in letting animals die, we’re a shelter,” she said.

Rabies is a viral disease that attacks the nervous system; it is 100 per cent fatal to humans once symptoms appear. It can be transmitted through a bite, a scratch, or contact with the saliva or nervous tissue of an infected animal through the eyes, mouth or an open wound.

People who may have been exposed should seek medical attention immediately, said Dr. Alex-Ane Mathieu, a public health medical adviser with the regional health authority in the Montérégie-Centre territory.

”There is no treatment for rabies,” she said.

People can visit a clinic or emergency department to determine whether they may have been exposed, explained Mathieu.

The last recorded human case of rabies in Quebec occurred in 2000. In Ontario, one locally acquired human case was reported in 2024, the first such case in the province since 1967.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 9, 2026.