The federal government doesn’t intend to lease out the former shelterbelt centre at Indian Head, Sask., this growing season.
Agriculture Canada says it’s still in negotiation with Carry The Kettle Nakota Nation, which has expressed interest in buying the property. The First Nation did not respond to a request for an interview.
“At this time, AAFC is not entertaining an interim lease for the facility,” said a department spokesperson by email last week. “Should this change, a formal request for proposal process will be used to identify a suitable tenant.”
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Last year, Weyburn-based HELP International had a contract to manage the centre and distribute trees.
However, that arrangement was fraught with problems.
HELP said the agriculture department didn’t leave equipment needed to maintain the site and only a few varieties of seedlings were available.
Locals complained about weeds and a general lack of maintenance.
The fate of the centre has been in limbo since the government an-nounced in 2012 it would shut it down by Dec. 31, 2013.
The centre opened in 1901 and supplied more than 600 million free trees across the west to farms and rural residences before it closed.
The agroforestry research staff based at the site are moving a couple of kilometres away to the Indian Head Research Farm.
Lorne Scott, reeve of the rural municipality of Indian Head, said he can’t believe any government would just walk away from the centre.
“It’s really a crime,” he said last week. “It’s just a real mess and a real tragedy that a government of any stripe would walk away from a public asset and just let it go to wrack and ruin.”
He said it appears no one will maintain the 640-acre site.
Scott said there could still be several million seedlings in the ground and will soon be too large to transplant. However, they are mostly surrounded by weeds more than a metre tall.
If a buyer chooses to keep the site as a tree nursery, there will be lots of work needed clean it up, he said.
Scott is part of a local group that was looking at options for the site.
Under federal treasury board policy, property that is to be sold must first be offered to other departments and Crown corporations, then First Nations, then, in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, made available under Treaty Land Entitlement and finally to municipal and provincial authorities. If it hasn’t been sold by then, it goes on the open market.
Scott said the October federal election might lead to some change and a way to salvage the centre.
“It just makes you sick when you drive by there. It used to be such a well-kept facility and at this time of the year there used to be hundreds of people coming.”
