Open letter to the Honourable Premier Christy Clark:
Re: Decisions regarding B.C. resident hunter allocations.
The facts presented to us with convincing clarity at the 16 Dec., 2014 emergency BC Wildlife Federation meeting at the Kelowna and District Hunting and Fishing Club, and in many subsequent forums, are really unarguable.
No matter how many different ways these facts are scrutinized, churned, parsed or cut, B.C. resident hunters are not being dealt with fairly.
Gael and I would strongly suggest that you, your cabinet colleagues and your staffs might wish to prudently review and re-visit the underlying rationale for this change in wildlife allocation.
Although I’m now, admittedly, focused more on “fish stuff”, i.e.: fish, fishing (angling) and fish habitat and…the long term health of the fisheries resource here in the Okanagan and in the Interior, my son, daughter and I, and my partner, Gael, in the past, have all benefited from the bounty of our rich province, with freshly hunted venison in the days when there was an opportunity for us, as B.C. resident hunters, to do so.
Now, from the facts before us, there is an imbalance and that opportunity is no longer realistically available to us and to many other B.C. resident hunters, should we wish to do so again.
Understandably, you and your cabinet colleagues and your staffs, will no doubt have received much feedback in varying forms and varying tones about this issue.
I can assure you, from our viewpoint, this issue will not simply fade away, as other less contentious issues might have in the past.
Again, it would seem to us to be smart, small “p” politics and also large “P” politics, to reconsider this set of decisions and their suspect rationale.
Yours too in conservation for our children’s, children’s, children for seven generations.
Rick Simpson and Gael Russell, Kelowna
