Environment committee  Absolutely. We find that the exact same thing occurs with wildlife diseases. When a disease becomes prevalent in a certain area, our hunting activities drop off significantly.

Environment committee  I remember my father once being asked that same question, or why he hunted. His answer to the person was that it's no different than me trying to tell you what benefits religion would have in my life. It's difficult to put into words. I couldn't say everything even though I work

Environment committee  If I could I'd break it down to quality of life opportunities, which I think Mr. Lowry also mentioned. Our lands that we manage and the ones that we own—we have about 67,000 acres right now—are open to the public for access for berry picking, hiking, photography, and all of what

Environment committee  Yes, absolutely. We know that we lost several thousand hunters with the long-gun registry. They decided to hang up their guns or sell off their guns rather than continue to hunt. That was unfortunate, because just in their licence sales alone, that 30%, is a major contributing

Environment committee  Thanks, Mr. Sopuck. I would think we all somewhat work on the premise that 10% of the population completely support hunting, 10% are adamantly opposed to it, and the 80% in the middle are the group that we all try to attain support from. If we have very definitive research on hu

Environment committee  Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the significance of licensed hunting and trapping in Canada. Many have already provided a great deal of information to you on this subject in greater depth and much more eloquently

Environment committee  It's a public awareness program that recognizes the landowner, as mentioned before, for doing the right thing. We have thousands of landowners in Saskatchewan who put aside a slough, a wetland, a tree row, or whatever it might be and leave it and don't take it out. Today's modern

Environment committee  Do you mean, on the connectivity program?

Environment committee  I can certainly report to you that it's a huge issue here in Saskatchewan. Illegal drainage is the primary culprit we're trying to deal with. No one has ever been charged in Saskatchewan for illegal drainage; however, we certainly have rules and laws in place to deal with it. As

Environment committee  I believe that with climate change, our focus and our connectivity model of research—the Go Green program that we're doing here in Saskatchewan—is trying to escalate or speed up the timelines to secure habitat, to provide the connectivity opportunities, as mentioned by a couple o

Environment committee  Actually, they're excellent. We're very happy with the “building into our landscape” model that we've started here with the Go Green process, and we'll actually be monitoring our lands every year for the next few years. But initially we're very, very excited about the abilities o

Environment committee  Is the question, do we measure the results of our habitat securement?

Environment committee  Yes we do. Every two years we do a monitoring on our properties to see how effective they are. With the weather cycles here in Saskatchewan, they can.... As an example, last year, it was a very dry year and, obviously, you've probably heard that this year is going to be a good ye

Environment committee  Thirty per cent of all licence fees for hunting, angling, or trapping are put into the fund. The fund has a steering committee made up of seven representative organizations in Saskatchewan. The fund has in it three different pillars, if you like: habitat securement, fisheries e

Environment committee  Good morning. I'd like to first of all thank you for the opportunity to address the standing committee. Perhaps I can give you somewhat of an on-the-ground perspective on habitat securement and other habitat programs. The Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation represents 32,000 membe