32 SAVE THE BIRDS


Trust of British Columbia and Ducks Unlimited Canada and is managed by the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations (FLNRO). Environment Canada’s Canadian Wildlife Service is also a partner of the program. “Oliver mentioned having hundreds or thousands of geese show up. We don’t see that as a negative in our fields; we’re trying to bring those birds to our properties,” says Tom Reid, who manages the agricultural lands for the VICLMP. “We’re putting crops in to lure them away from adjacent agricultural lands to limit the damage on our neighbours’ farms and bring them to ours.”


VICLMP works with local producers who farm their agricultural lands and recognize the balance that needs to be struck between managing for conservation values and making it economically viable to farm their properties.


Even as a conservation organization, they struggle with resident Canada geese and their impact on estuary habitat. This year, they successfully organized a targeted hunt for the resident


nfrom page 31


geese in the Qualicum area. Overall, the organization is aware of the pressure of migratory birds and other wildlife on Island farmers and see value in advocating for improved compensation programs.


“We support local producers in seeking adequate compensation so we’re not seeing farmers give up and convert their soil-based agricultural lands to something that is not as appropriate for migratory birds, such as greenhouses or berry crops, or just stopping farming all together,” says Reid.


Delta model


One of the most of successful models for


co-operation in promoting the preservation of farmland and wildlife habitat is the Delta Farmland and Wildlife Trust. Operating since 1990, the trust runs stewardship programs to support grassland set-asides, winter cover crops, laser leveling and field liming, and hedgerow and grass margin stewardship. Outgoing program


manager Christine Terpsma Continued on next page o


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COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • JANUARY 2017


Oliver Balme is a Cowichan dairy farmer frustrated by waterfowl damage. TAMARA LEIGH PHOTO Farmers losing faith in compensation


Migratory birds may have been the primary focus but local dairy farmers took the opportunity to voice their objection to changes in the Agriculture Wildlife Compensation Program during a public forum on Vancouver Island in November. “As dairy farmers, we are starting to lose trust in this whole compensation program. We receive compensation for forage crops and we did for corn up until about five years ago,” says John Vanden Dungen, who has a dairy in the Cowichan Valley. “Then, Roosevelt elk in the valley became a major problem and had a huge impact on our corn crops, and suddenly we no longer receive compensation for corn.” When he inquired about it, Vanden Dungen was told that corn crops are too valuable for the Agriculture Wildlife Compensation Program, which has no cost to producers, and that he would need to buy Production Insurance instead. “We penciled it out and you have to have a crop failure about every third year to make crop insurance pay on corn,” he explains. “These elk, if you don’t do other mitigation, they are going to destroy your crop every single year. Your premiums are


going to go through the roof. It’s not insurance anymore; you’re basically buying your own crop back.”


Roosevelt elk have been reintroduced to the Cowichan Valley by the BC Ministry of Environment as part of an effort to return the species to their historic range. The initiative has been successful but as their numbers grow, so does the pressure on local dairy farmers.


Between the elk, bears, swan, geese and wigeon, Vanden Dungen was paid for 90 tonnes of lost forage last year. Replacing that feed is more difficult than it sounds, particularly for Island farmers. “It costs us $50 a tonne more bringing feed here than it costs in Delta just to get it across on the ferry,” he says. “We can only be competitive as dairy farmers here if we can grow those forages and grow them economically.


“We do a good job of it, we grow good crops here, but not if they are getting eaten. Slowly, the dairy farmers are going to disappear and it’s all going to go into berry crops or vegetables and your wintering swan habitat is going to disappear.”


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