Producers want more compensation | Ability to charge hunters for land access could help
FORT MACLEOD, Alta. — Cattle and wildlife share the land in southwestern Alberta’s cattle country, and producers want their organization to work toward quicker and better compensation when the domestic and the wild interact.
Members attending Alberta Beef Producers’ Zone 2 meeting Oct. 28 passed three wildlife related resolutions for consideration at the Dec. 2-4 annual meeting.
Blaine Marr of Twin Butte, Alta., said ranchers should be able to charge hunters who seek game on private land. That is now prohibited under the provincial wildlife act.
“The precedent is set,” Marr said in a later interview.
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“Landowners are able to charge for seismic, oil and gas exploration, sight seeing, bird watching, berry picking. Big game hunting is the only recreation activity for which landowners are not allowed to charge access.
“But oil and gas is owned by the public, it’s a public resource. So is wildlife. What’s the difference?”
Marr said ranchers’ ability to charge hunters for access could help them pay for livestock losses and property damage resulting from an expanding bear, wolf, cougar, deer and elk population.
Good land stewardship creates habitat attractive to wildlife, so environmentally conscious ranchers tend to pay a higher price in livestock damage.
“If you were able to get some kind of reward for this wildlife that is on your land, and a fee for access, that would address it,” he said.
Opponents to the idea of paid hunting often point to the Texas model, where fees for hunting made it prohibitively expensive and there is no public or leased land that hunters can use without charge.
Todd Zimmerling, president of the Alberta Conservation Association, said his group has no position on paid hunting, but some ACA member groups would likely object, fearing fees would make hunting unaffordable.
“I don’t disagree that those who are doing a good job of managing the wildlife on the land should be compensated in some way, basically compensated for the ecological goods and services they’re providing,” said Zimmerling.
However, he said wildlife has value to other sectors besides hunters.
Conservation leasing programs and tax incentives based on the quality of habitat that ranchers provide are two options that might achieve the goal of more fully compensating ranchers, he said.
Another wildlife related resolution encouraged ABP to push for more timely compensation payments to ranchers who lose animals to grizzly bears, cougars and wolves.
Jeff Bectell, who raises cattle near Waterton Lakes National Park, said compensation payments were delayed for months last year, and it appears the same thing will happen this year.
The province’s compensation payments are issued through the ACA using funds from hunting and fishing licences.
Bectell speculated that the ACA delayed payments to make a point with government that hunters and anglers should not be footing the entire bill for compensation.
“I just don’t think that we need to be the guys that get hit on the head when the ACA is trying to make a political point,” he said.
Zimmerling said the group ran out of money in its compensation fund last year so it delayed payments to ranchers until its new budget year.
He said the federal government pays 60 percent of predator compensation costs in British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and the ACA has been lobbying for the same federal contribution in Alberta.
“Literally, as of today, I got a phone call telling me that it looks like … the federal government will be paying 60 percent, so it shouldn’t be an issue going forward,” he said Oct. 29.
“We should have lots of funds to cover off the cost.”
He said claims for compensation from carnivore kills of cattle, sheep and other livestock totalled $274,072 in 2012, up from $68,674 in 2000.
More claims and higher values for livestock have caused a major increase in the amounts.
“Our large predators are doing quite well, and unfortunately it’s obviously having a direct impact on our cattle producers and our sheep producers as well,” Zimmerling said.
However, controlling the number of large carnivores has become a social and political issue, he added.
Another resolution at the Zone 2 meeting called for the province to “encourage voluntary market-based payments for ecological services” provided by cattle producers.
Nanton area rancher Bob Lowe said he doesn’t know how such a system would work, but the resolution might start discussion toward a plan.
“The big thing coming, in my mind, to the cattle industry is getting paid for what we actually produce, other than just cattle,” he said.
“As we know, we produce clean water, we produce views, we produce game. There’s a bunch of stuff, and I think it’s time we got paid for it.”
