The struggle continues to keep up with growing demand for a provincial resource that’s diminishing. That it’s put in those terms is telling, because it implies a business model, compensation, and public access to or for a resource. Words such a privatization and the economy are used liberally in the exchange. Even English Common Law including the places of Kings and commoners is invoked. Hard to imagine the debate is about wildlife and habitat.At the core is that hunters and fishermen see decreasing access to places they can hunt or fish. Private landowners have various approaches to access to or through their land for outdoors pursuits, from conditional permission to blunt refusal made clear by signs that warn against trespassing or hunting. The provincial government has been trying for the past year or more to resolve some of the concerns, but hit a solid wall with its first Open Spaces Alberta document which the Alberta Fish and Game Association and others viewed as paid hunting and resoundingly rejected. Some saw it as secretive and questioned the motivation. The proposal provided a fee to farmers and ranchers for users to access hunting and fishing opportunities on their land. Brian Dingreville, president of the Lethbridge Fish and Game Association, says he believes paid hunting has been going on for at least 10 years and is a reality today. “The focus seems to be on the economic reality of Americans coming up here and paying big dollars to hunt.” He says some will pay $25,000 or more for trophy animals. “Wildlife has become a product you can sell.” Because of the opposition to the original Open Spaces plan, Alberta Sustainable Resources Development in August sought responses from mainly fish and game advocates and land owners to a revised version that removed the most contentious part, called Hunting for Habitat, but retained a modified Recreation Access Management Program (RAMP). Jim Allen, the province’s head of game management, says the number of responses submitted by the Sept. 30 deadline was not overwhelming, but that some had ideas he ‘d like to include in further massaging the program. By late summer next year, pilot projects in Wildlife Management Units 108 and 300 south and southwest of Lethbridge will be ready to go ahead for three years. Allen’s submitting a budget to Sustainable Resources Development that includes $100,000 initially to compensate landowners who apply to be part of the program, whose habitat sustains wildlife and who are willing to let hunters or anglers with WIN cards and licences on to or across their land. Payment would be based on a daily scale up to $10, to a maximum of $2,000 per section of land per year. Local Fish and Game Association’s Dingreville says: “Our position hasn’t suggested farmers and ranchers shouldn’t be compensated for enhancing habitat for wildlife or for allowing access.” It appears the revision may start to accomplish that while providing free public access for hunters and anglers to hunt or fish for legal species.
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