KAMLOOPS, B.C. — As far as Brian McKersie knows, city people do not cross through private backyards to shorten their route, so they should not have the right to cross through his pastures in southeastern British Columbia.
“I say to city people, do you have a garden in town? My hayfields are my garden,” said the president of the B.C. Cattlemen’s Association.
He ranches at Canal Flats, a popular recreation area, and people often ask permission to pass through his property. However, fewer are asking permission as more people want to hike, cycle, ride ATVs or pursue other activities, he said in an interview during the BCCA annual meeting in Kamloops May 25-27.
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More subdivisions are en-croaching on the business of agriculture. City dwellers want to see wildlife and enjoy green spaces without realizing the cost to farmers and their ability to produce food.
“We are definitely a minority,” said McKersie.
The BCCA passed a resolution asking the three provincial political parties to start talking with agriculture interests about the implications of public access to private land.
“The access issue is bigger in some regions than others,” said rancher Dave Zehnder, who lives at Invermere.
“People are using our land and if we say people can go through a piece of our land, we could lose the right to control a legal right of way. That is problematic for us,” he said in an interview.
Subdivisions have been made without consideration for access and, over time, trails are created as the public passes through.
Ranchers end up with a bigger problem when that trail becomes a public road crossing their land.
“You don’t just have a trail, you have a legally designated public road. You no longer have control and you have to let people in there,” said Zehnder.
He is concerned about the pressure on the agriculture community to open private land. There are implications for habitat and the environment when the public is allowed to enter previously closed areas.
Under food safety protocols, farmers and ranchers have to record who has been on their property, note weed distribution and take care of garbage, as well as other nuisance factors.
The issue is linked to legislation proposed by the B.C. Green Party. The Right to Roam act targets locked gates and fences on private and public land that restrict access to wild lands.
“British Columbians are in-creasingly being fenced out of the province’s wild lands,” said Green Party leader Andrew Weaver in a news release.
“The ability to access and experience nature is a public right, and we must protect it. Free public access to the outdoors is vital to people’s health and well being, but it is also vital to the health and well being of our environment.
“People protect what they know and love. If we become disconnected from our environment, we risk disengaging with the fight for its future,” said Weaver in the release.
The concern involves a case before the B.C. Supreme Court in which the Nicola Valley Fish and Game Club has challenged the Douglas Lake Ranch over the right to access.
The ranch, located about 70 kilometres south of Kamloops, has blocked the public from fishing in two lakes on its property.
The ranch has a private resort where paying guests are allowed to use the lakes.
The court must decide whether the road used to access the lakes is a public highway, whether the public should have access to Minnie Lake and Stoney Lake, which are on private property, and whether Douglas Lake Ranch owns the fish in those lakes because it stocks them with trout.Â
American billionaire Stan Kroenke owns the ranch. He also owns the Denver Nuggets of the National Basketball League, Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League and the Colorado Avalanche of the National Hockey League.
