Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome to the committee members. I'm very pleased that you're visiting us here in the southern Okanagan Similkameen today.
I'm going to speak to you specifically about the environmental chapter. I'm here representing the Southern Interior Stockmen's Association. We're an association that represents about 150 ranching families in the southern interior of B.C. and approximately 30,000 head of cattle. You've already heard from my colleague Ernie Willis this morning. He was representing our provincial organization. I'm actually a fourth-generation rancher myself, a cow-calf producer in the Similkameen Valley.
Ranchers have long considered themselves stewards of the land and keepers of green space. With the increased urban sprawl, ranching operations and agriculture in general seem to come under closer scrutiny each day. Here in the southern interior, not only do we see increased legislation and regulation, but also we now have what we perceive to be a threat of a proposed national park. When I use the word “threat”, you can get the idea that we are not in favour of a proposed national park.
The environmental initiatives that have been undertaken already in British Columbia, through APF funding and actually through agriculture and environment partnership initiatives, have contributed greatly to helping ranchers in British Columbia meet some of those needs and improve some of their management practices. We have several programs here in B.C. The wild predator program I believe is actually unique to British Columbia. That's a program administered through these funds, which works with ranchers to alleviate predator problems for cattle.
The other thing we have been allowed to do through this funding is to develop unique relationships with ministries and NGO groups to develop pilot projects and work through ungulate problems of forage loss, forage depredation. We have several pilot projects on the go, from the wild ungulate compensation program in the East Kootenays, to wildlife damage program in the Peace River area, to an off-road vehicles strategy, to a program for noxious and invasive weeds. All of these relate directly to the environment and to our maintaining our green space and riparian areas.
We've been somewhat slow on the uptake of the environmental farm plans themselves. Nonetheless, they have taken off as far as the ranching community goes. We see increased need for that and increased continuation of the tools and funding that are available through those opportunities. As I said, we are the guardians and the keepers of huge amounts of green space here in British Columbia, and those tools enable us to improve upon that and provide that green space for viewing by urban dwellers.
We have seen huge increases in agriculture and wildlife conflicts here in British Columbia. We have conflicting regulations to deal with, both federal and provincial. We have “species at risk” legislation coming down the pike that we need to deal with on our ranches and for which we need to provide. Actually, the conflicts with wildlife in British Columbia have really gone beyond what is reasonably acceptable for a rancher to be able to deal with on his or her own. I'm sure you've heard stories of crop damage in the Peace, and stored forage damage, especially in northern B.C. this year, because of the increased snowfall. But that's not unique to the Peace River; it's happening all over British Columbia. So we see a need for continued government programs and funding, continued tools and enhanced tools that we can use to work and maintain that green space, to maintain the land base in a manner that will be economically viable in perpetuity.
I do have more information here on the environmental farm plans, just for your information.
Cow-calf producers in British Columbia have been able to access almost $400,000 of funding, which has gone towards best management practices on their individual ranches, and that's huge. That's just the funding we're talking about, federal funding. We're not talking about the partnered funding, such as Ducks Unlimited and that type of funding.
I think in order for us to continue to be good stewards of the land and to continue to provide that green space area that is so valued by the urban population, we certainly need to look to you to provide us with increased tools, increased funding, increased ideas for us to continue that level of stewardship and even enhance what is there.
I thank you very much for allowing me to speak to you today.