ELECTION 2024 OP-ED: Fish and Wildlife Management has hit rock bottom

The government’s capacity to manage wildlife has declined steadily for decades. Its ability to conduct meaningful science is scraping along at rock bottom.

Just last week we learned that government field staff are being asked to turn in their cell phones and have lost funding for travel, which will likely force the cancellation of a number of winter inventories and crucial conservation projects.

With a provincial election looming, the stakes for wildlife and the environment could not be higher.

British Columbia has changed dramatically over the years. We have more people on the land and water, so there are more threats to fish, wildlife, and habitat. Government revenue is going up, but funding for natural resource management is not. The proportion of government expenditures spent on fish and wildlife has dropped by an alarming 75 per cent between 1993 and today.

Funding for fish and wildlife management in British Columbia is estimated at about $7 per capita and in Alberta about $9 per capita. Contrast that with expenditures in nearby jurisdictions such as Washington ($29), Montana ($91) and Alaska ($235). These estimates are from 2016, but it’s fair to say things have not improved.

Despite having one of the most bio-diverse regions in North America, we spend less per person, less per species, and less per square kilometre than our neighbours and it shows.

Fish and wildlife are supposed to be managed as a public, shared resource for the benefit of all. British Columbians enjoy unique opportunities to hike, camp, hunt, and fish and to see and enjoy wildlife and the outdoors. But that is all in peril as fish and wildlife decline and public access to wildlife and the backcountry erodes.

Hunters pay a surcharge on licenses and tags, amounting to about 20 per cent of fees paid, which funds wildlife and habitat enhancement via the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation. When asked, hunters have told B.C. researchers they would pay even more if those fees were dedicated to supporting wildlife. That same research found that hunters overwhelmingly support handing wildlife management over to an agency independent of government. What this tells me is that hunters are sick of politically motivated decisions.

The B.C. Wildlife Federation is adamant that the highest priorities for wildlife management should be sustainability for future generations and that decisions should be driven by science. Unfortunately, the decline of funding for wildlife management has severely curtailed data collection, which means we don’t have a good understanding about the health of many species and wildlife populations.

You cannot manage what you cannot count.

Research respondents strongly believe that elected officials cannot be trusted to follow science, act for future generations, or to spend money wisely. We have seen our government curtail hunting in backroom deals to expand industrial activities that do real harm to wildlife. This must end.

If we dedicate all license fees to conservation, habitat restoration, road decommissioning, and science to support species recovery, people are willing to pay more to hunt. That means the government could increase revenue for conservation work by orders of magnitude simply by getting out of the way and letting hunters open their wallets.

We must dedicate a sensible portion of the provincial budget to natural resource management and rededicate ourselves to data collection and quality scientific analysis for the health of B.C.’s iconic species.