20 FORAGE project


descend now upon the fraction that remains after years of development and shifting land uses. “The level of grazing, from what [farmers] tell me, has only increased year after year, and it's only gotten worse,” says DFWT program manager Drew Bondar. The birds need food regardless of


who provides it, but local farms offer the best foraging sites. DFWT launched a forage enhancement pilot project two years ago to encourage farmers to plant soil-based perennial crops in order to preserve bird habitat. The goal is to encourage farmers to keep perennial crops by helping with seed costs.


“Because that damage sometimes


is so severe, particularly for farmers in Boundary Bay, they have to come back and reseed these fields entirely every single year,” says Bondar. “We're assisting with those costs – not so much the lost yields, but the cost associated with either having to overseed or reseed a field.”


DFWT also offers a winter cover


crop incentive, as well as set-aside fields to lure birds away from perennial fields. While those projects are helping, farmers have still seen substantial damage to their crops.


Pilot pays The pilot project pays


participating farmers $75 per acre to reseed fields damaged by waterfowl with perennial forage crops. In 2017, a total of 12 farmers in


Delta farmer Jack Bates is cutting his losses to overwintering waterfowl by planting annual forage crops where perennial crops once grew to feed his dairy herd. SEAN HITREC PHOTO


Delta reseeded 651 acres through the program. To date, Bondar says eight farmers have signed on this year to reseed 465 acres. Bondar hopes the $75 per acre incentive along with other


COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • NOVEMBER 2018 nfrom pg 19


programs DFWT offers will be enough to persuade farmers not to change to an annual or non-soil- based crop. “To reseed a field, you're looking at $350 to $500 an acre and that's still just a small portion,” he says. “That's not even really covering the seed cost or anything like that. It's just to trying to help.” DFWT receives funding for its


activities through private donations as well as from all three levels of government and the risk of having its wings clipped next spring is low. “Unless something absolutely wild happens, we're expecting [forage enhancement] funding to continue,” Bondar says.


Measuring the impact “Ag stewardship has always been


a priority for us and it's going to continue being a priority,” adds Ken Brock, head of stewardship at the Canadian Wildlife Service, an agency of Environment and Climate Change Canada. The federal government


supported the initial pilot program but it wants to know the impact as it weighs whether or not to contribute another round of funding. “We thought [the pilot project]


was worth a shot,” Brock says. “I don't have a real sense of the demand, yet, for the forage pilot. It's not to say there isn't one, it's to say that I don't have it.” There are several possible


measures of impact, from the number of farmers participating in the program to the number of acres seeded to provide foraging habitat. Acreage is what farmers like Jack Bates look at, given that losses per acre can be in the thousands of dollars. “It’s a start,” he says.


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