A two-year pilot project in southeastern Saskatchewan will measure the value of ecological goods and services that agricultural landowners provide to the public.
The Lower Souris Watershed Committee will use more than $530,000 from the federal government for the project.
“We’re doing a pilot to try and determine what the costs are to landowners to provide wildlife habitat to the public of the world,” said committee chair John Van Eaton of Maryfield, Sask.
“We know there’s a cost. We don’t know what that number is.”
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The project will involve taking inventory of land uses and determining how to best achieve environmental benefits such as cleaner water, renewed soil and better wildlife habitat.
The committee, the federal government, Ducks Unlimited Canada, the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Alberta will set goals for the quality and quantity of different types of habitat in the region and identify what tools are required to achieve them.
“It’s a great announcement,” said federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz, who was supposed to provide details during a speech to rural municipal delegates in Regina last week but didn’t.
He later said the pages of his presentation containing that information stuck together.
However, he said the pilot is important and farmers have a tremendous role to play.
“It all comes back to the great job that farmers do in safeguarding the environment for all of us,” he told reporters.
Van Eaton said the project will be complete in the summer of 2009. The Lower Souris region includes the communities of Carlyle, Redvers, Moosomin, Carnduff, Gainsborough and the Moose Mountain area.
“We don’t view this as an agricultural subsidy,” added Van Eaton.
“This is a service that has been provided by landowners, whether they’re agricultural or not, to the general public of the world for a number of years for very little compensation. When you look at that and recognize it, it’s got to be worth something.”
Eight similar projects are underway in Canada.
