An audience of close to 120 concerned wildlife enthusiasts turned out for a town hall discussion on The Future of Fish and Wildlife: Are we Losing What Makes B.C. Special? at the 100 Mile Community Hall on April 11.
The B.C. Wildlife Federation (BCWF) has concerns it wants every voter to consider and is holding these town halls across the province to get the word out and get the discussion going – both before and after the May 9 election.
BCWF resident priority program manager Jesse Zeman presented many graphs and statistics to demonstrate these concerns,and fielded many questions from the crowd, both seated and standing to hear him speak.
Zeman says it is a non-partisan problem – not the fault of one or another government, but that of the wildlife enthusiasts themselves, who haven’t spoken out to demand government increase its investment, before any more fish and game populations are threatened in the province.
While fish and wildlife, in general, are province-wide issues that have been happening for decades, the threat includes the caribou, steelhead and moose populations in the Cariboo Chilcotin, he explains.
“We’ve had it so good for so long in B.C. that nobody really thought it was an issue.
“I think that over time it is a slow, gradual decline until we get to the point where we are now, where we are closing fishing seasons and hunting opportunities have been reduced drastically, and … mountain caribou populations, some of which are on the verge of blinking out.”
For too long, hunting and fishing populations in the province have been left to the fate of a futile hope they would improve eventually, but after decades, the current data has determined this waiting game does not work, he explains.
“It’s happening for species everywhere [in B.C.] and everybody is looking around now, saying ‘holey smokes, what happened, and how do we fix it’.”
Floyd Lee is the Lone Butte Fish & Wildlife Association’s (LBFW) board representative to BCWF, who attended the town hall meeting.
“Zemen put on a terrific educational presentation focusing on the government’s management of wildlife over the past 40years,” says Lee. “The message delivered was clear; wildlife in B.C. is in trouble and in many cases populations are dwindling including caribou and moose, in the Cariboo Chilcotin.”
The statistics presented included how the status quo has been to add restrictions to hunting seasons and divide the allocations into smaller amounts and continue to watch populations decline, he explains.
Lee adds the term for this style of management is “managing to zero”.
“The status quo has also caused stakeholders to be competing against each other for allocation with government caught in the middle.”
The local LBFW rep says also discussed at last week’s town hall was how there is more access, as well as more people,hunters and habitat issues affecting wildlife today.
Lee notes the BCWF presentation made comparisons to seven other nearby jurisdictions, and yet in British Columbia, datashows the amount of funding, science, and care for this resource has remained at the same level for decades.
“Most of the other states or provinces had a smaller land base, less people, less species to manage for, yet much largerbudgets.
“Inadequate funding has resulted in management being unable to afford the cost of the science and data to managewildlife.”
However, there was some funded action for B.C. wildlife in the outlook after Forests, Lands and Natural ResourceOperations Minister Steve Thomson recently announced a new agency to manage wildlife in B.C. to be funded from the saleof all hunting licences and tags, Lee notes.
“The agency will be science based, well funded and aimed at managing the resource for the benefit of wildlife rather thanfor any special interest groups.”
In the BCWF’s outlook, Zeman says government should not allow special interest groups to battle over a dwindling resource like slices of a shrinking pie rather than bringing them together to address the issues.
“People in B.C. have not had a focus on recovering the decreasing resource … where the appropriate response from peoplewho care about fish and wildlife would be a focus onto growing and increasing these resources and getting them backwhere they were.”
The BCWF needs more champions, Zeman says, so he asks everyone who cares about this cause to sign a petition, and toask questions the election candidates campaigning for public offices in every constituency around the province.
“On the landscape, there are hundreds of issues … but we aren’t dealing with those, we just change hunting regulationsand fishing seasons, and hope things will change. What we are seeing – after 40 years of trying – is that doesn’t work.”
For more information about the federation’s growing concerns and see statistics for B.C.’s wildlife, to sign the petition, orto view its current schedule for town halls, April 20 (tonight) to April 26, visit the website at www.bcwf.net.
