Alberta Pheasants May Vanish?
Upland birds aren’t getting much love in Alberta, Canada: “…pheasant hunting could become the exclusive purview of rich people hunting on private preserves, like European nobility.”
Some folks think that’s an inevitability here in the States too – hopefully not. Anyhow, here’s the situation in Alberta, excerpted from here:
> In a province hungry for economic diversification, imagine an industry that could bring $231 million to small, struggling communities during a few short months in the fall. Alberta politicians would be falling over themselves to make it happen.
> That’s what pheasant hunting was worth to South Dakota in 2010, according to the state’s estimates. Of that $231 million, the vast majority, $190 million, was spent by visitors. Some of those out-of-state hunters were frustrated hunters from Alberta, where a once-thriving pheasant industry is in the doldrums.
> According to the non-profit group Upland Birds Alberta (UBA), it may not even survive.
“If we don’t act now, we’re liable to lose this tradition forever,” says Stan Grad, director of UBA.
> As recently as the mid-1980s, upwards of 100,000 pheasants were released in Alberta annually in a government-supported program that has existed since 1945. With declining budgets and competing priorities, the province this year is funding the release of 13,900 pheasants and there is risk that the program will disappear altogether next year, the UBA says.
> With fewer birds, Alberta pheasant hunter numbers have dropped from 19,000 in the mid-1980s to less than 6,000, causing Alberta communities to lose spinoff revenue from fuel, accommodation and restaurant purchases during the slow fall shoulder season.
> The UBA wants to convince the provincial government to reinvest in its pheasant release program with an economic impact assessment it has commissioned and hopes to have ready by September.
> For 2011, the Alberta government has signed a $300,000 contract with the Brooks hatchery for 13,900 birds, including release costs at designated sites.The government gets about $360,000 from fees paid by pheasant hunters.
>Â The bird release program was rescued by former finance minister and avid hunter Ted Morton, who found the money somewhere in a government corner. If not for Morton, the program would have been dead entirely for this year.
> Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, the department historically responsible for the program, had no pheasant budget for 2011.
> Compared to the 14,000 birds and 6,000 hunters in Alberta, South Dakota had a 2010 pheasant population of 8.4 million birds, with 167,000 hunters taking 1,598,000 pheasant.
> Without the UBA’s efforts, pheasant hunting could become the exclusive purview of rich people hunting on private preserves, like European nobility. The UBA is blunt…”the province has done little to protect and restore suitable habitat.”
> If not for groups like Pheasants Forever, Ducks Unlimited and others, natural habitat that helps sustain pheasants and other birds would be plowed under for agriculture. City folks who care about clean water and clean air owe them gratitude and support.
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