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From LethbridgeHerald.com
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Hunters have sights set on Open Spaces
By RIC SWIHART
Mar 6, 2008, 21:57
Open Spaces Alberta: Alberta’s New Cultural Policy is ringing up positives from the arts world to recreationists.
But it has run into a brick wall with the world of hunting in Alberta.
Ted Morton, Minister for Sustainable Resource Development, has been pursuing a pilot project he feels will assure Albertans greater access to the wildlife resource while providing landowners some degree of compensation.
The brick wall widened in late February.
Morton, in the middle of his election campaign, addressed the Alberta Fish and Game Association conference in Edmonton — the Liberals had been excluded — to reveal his two-part proposal scheduled to begin this fall.
One is the Recreational Access Management Program. The other is Hunting for Habitat Program.
Southwestern Alberta is at the heart of the debate. The pilots are scheduled for Alberta Wildlife Management Unit 108, which runs from near the County of Lethbridge Airport in a triangle to the American border running along Highways 4 and 5.
The other is Unit 300, which is anchored by Cardston on the northeast, running along the southern boundary of the Blood Reserve, north along that boundary to near Glenwood, west to near the forest reserve and then angling southeast along the northern boundary of Waterton Lakes National Park.
In the Recreational Access Management Program, large private landowners will be compensated $10 to $20 per user day by the government, to a maximum of 100 days per section, “for providing recreational access for hunting and fishing for free to the public.”
For the same access, the Hunting for Habitat Program will compensate private landowners with wildlife tags from resident allocations which they can sell to resident hunters or to outfitters who can then re-sell the tags to guide non-resident Canadians, or non-resident aliens.
Brian Dingreville, president of the Lethbridge Fish and Game Association, came out swinging.
“I would pay for full-page advertisements to stop this plan,” Dingreville said. “This must be stopped.”
Maurice Nadeau of Edmonton, the Alberta association president, said the greatest risk is both proposals would entitle landowners — who would be required to enrol in the program — to receive money from hunters.
Nadeau points out it is illegal for a landowner to charge money for access to land for the purpose of hunting or fishing.
“The fish and game membership views the Open Spaces Project as privatization of Alberta’s wild resources, something the association vehemently opposes,” said Nadeau. “Just as we opposed the ill-fated decision to allow privatization of wildlife, game farmers, no good could come of it, and now our wild ungulates face huge health risks.”
Nadeau said the association has no objection to landowners being recognized for good habitat stewardship and providing sports people access to their lands.
“We would suggest that tax incentives could be one of the tools by which this happens,” he said.
Two political parties have come out strongly opposed to the paid-hunting plan.
Lethbridge East Liberal MLA Bridget Pastoor said nothing in the hunting pilot programs fits in with Liberal plans.
“We wanted to tell Fish and Game of our vision to protect Alberta’s natural wonders,” said Pastoor.
Wildrose Alliance leader Paul Hinman, who represented both pilot wildlife management areas, has also campaigned against the pilot projects. He was narrowly felled in the Alberta election by Tory Broyce Jacobs.
Paid hunting is a right in several states in the United States, including Montana.
In December, Morton led a delegation from Alberta to Helena, Mont., and on to Utah to gauge the hunting laws and programs, said Alan Charles of the Montana Fish and Wildlife Department.
Charles, in charge of the wildlife block management program, said charging a hunter a fee to access their land is a right in Montana.
But that doesn’t make it right, he said.
About 20 years ago, Montana launched its block management program to offset the impacts of pure paid hunting.
Using state funds, landowners can register annually with the block management program. Those registering agree to allow hunters and fishermen access to their land, tempered by common-sense rules the landowners wish to safeguard their land resource.
Compensation from the state fund is based on hunter days for each parcel registered. The compensation is $10 per hunter day to a maximum of $12,000 a year.
“Last year 1,250 landowners enrolled in the program,” said Charles.
Those landowners controlled about 8.5 million acres. The majority of that land was private. Some state and federal lands were included, he said.
A bonus for the participating landowners is an annual hunting and fishing licence. The state also provides public liability for hunters accessing landowner lands.
The average block payout last year was about $3,000.
“We wanted to find a way to preserve traditional hunting where hunters would not have to pay a fee to hunt,” he said. “We also wanted to recognize that it is a privilege for hunters to come on private land.”
Darrel Rowledge of Calgary, a political scientist and spokesman for the Alliance for Public Wildlife, said Morton’s Open Spaces proposal comes down to a matter of economics.
At the heart of the crisis is a failure to solve the financial ills of the agriculture industry and providing a pay-to-hunt policy is only an attempt to pour more money into the agriculture industry. It could, however, decimate the province’s wildlife resource at a time when it is government’s burden to protect that resource, he said.
Hunting and fishing have become another major industry in North America, said Rowledge.
In the U.S., it is worth $120 billion a year in first-time spending. In Canada, it is worth $12.1 billion, a figure which nears the $12.3-billion financial contribution of the agriculture sector to the nation’s gross domestic product.
Rowledge said paid hunting and fishing will remove the sport realities.
Fishing can be made simple. Just use dynamite and the fish will float to the surface. Compare that with money-spending fishermen who use hooks and flies in the real sport of fishing.
And paid hunting is a guarantee of game. Traditional hunting keeps the masses coming back hoping for game.
Rowledge said traditional hunting and fishing is the best way the wildlife resource can be maintained and even controlled.
Bob Scammell, a fish and game supporter, said critics immediately warned no matter where the money comes from, the programs add up to paying for access to land that is unlawful under The Wildlife Act.
It would mean paid-hunting programs that will actually close hunting spaces for ordinary resident hunters and open them to wealthy foreign shooters, he said.
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