BCWF testifies to the Standing Committee for Environment 

B.C. Wildlife Federation Executive Director Jesse Zeman addressed the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development on December 11, 2024. 

This is an edited excerpt of his comments. 

Thanks to the committee for the opportunity to be a witness. 

The B.C. Wildlife Federation is British Columbia’s largest and oldest conservation organization, with over 40,000 members and 100 clubs across the province. Our clubs and members spend hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours and dollars conducting wildlife, wetland, and fish habitat restoration, as well as advocating for legislative, regulatory, and policy changes to support a future that includes healthy fish, wildlife and habitat. 

Over the past two years in the world of fish, wildlife, habitat, water and wetlands, the BCWF has delivered over 100 projects worth more than $7 million while partnering with over 50 indigenous communities. This includes 71 beaver dam analogues built in 2024 and nearly 45,000 kilograms of garbage removed from the tidal marsh in the Fraser River. Since 2021, we’ve delivered over 230 projects and more than $11 million in project work for the benefit of the environment. 

Our partners and funders include indigenous communities, ENGOs, local communities, private landholders, the Government of Canada, and the Province of B.C. Our 2016 estimate of volunteer contributions by our members was over 300,000 hours per year. I believe we greatly exceed that now. 

Our membership is dedicated to the conservation of fish, wildlife and habitat, donating hours and dollars to science and on-the-ground stewardship. However, our membership is also extremely concerned about the future of public access to fish, wildlife habitat and nature in general. 

The BCWF is deeply concerned that Bill C-73 does not ensure a future in which Canadians can camp, hike, backpack, birdwatch, and hunt and fish sustainably. These sustainable lifestyles and activities must be front and centre for new land designations. 

This Bill provides the Minister of Environment and Climate Change powers that do not include adequate Parliamentary oversight. The Bill talks about collaboration, but does not ensure that stakeholders in British Columbia will be consulted. And the bill provides authority to set aside public land and delegate control to unelected management authorities. Consultation includes provinces, indigenous peoples of Canada and an advisory committee. There is no stipulation about the representation of the advisory committee. 

We have a number of examples where the Minister of Environment and Climate Change has failed to consult and represent the public, including caribou recovery in northeast B.C., which has set a number of our communities back by decades, and a lack of leadership around ensuring public access for sustainable lifestyles and sustainable outdoor recreation around mechanisms to achieve “30 by 30” targets. We believe that connecting British Columbians and Canadians to nature is good for their mental and physical health, and that people connected to the land are people who will protect it. 

The BCWF supports increased conservation. However, there is significant concern that this comes at the expense of eliminating sustainable use and sustainable outdoor recreation. The BCWF has experienced this with the proposed South Okanagan-Similkameen National Park Reserve in the same area where our members have funded, donated to and volunteered for the largest and most collaborative mule deer research project in the province’s history. Throughout this project, our members have assisted in capturing, GPS collaring and doing mortality investigations on mule deer, as well as deploying and maintaining over 150 remote sensing trail cameras and reviewing millions of pictures. 

These same people are now being told by the Government of Canada that it does not want to see them hunting in their own backyard because it’s being turned into a national park reserve. We have also experienced declarations of moratoriums on licensed hunting through other federally derived conservation mechanisms. 

This Bill does not give us comfort that British Columbians and Canadians will be able to enjoy and interact with nature in the same places and in the same ways we can today. If Canadian families are out camping, hiking, backpacking, hunting, and fishing sustainably, the Government of Canada should be saying: “This is great. We want more people and their kids off their screens and out connecting with nature.” The Government of Canada should be encouraging and supporting sustainable lifestyles and sustainable outdoor recreation, and that should be recognized in this Bill. 

To close, everyone needs to see themselves in our shared future. 

Question from MP Blaine Calkins: What was the B.C. Wildlife Federation’s role in helping the government craft this legislation? Were you consulted prior to the development of this legislation? As well, because it’s a process law, how would this help the B.C. Wildlife Federation to deliver meaningful conservation programs on the ground, if at all? 

Zeman: The first question was whether we were consulted on this law. No, to my knowledge, our organization was not. 

The second question was, how does this help? The challenge we’re having out here, quite frankly, is this: There is a lot of concern about federal mandates and federal funding for protected areas. Our organization, by and large, supports increased conservation measures. I think we demonstrated that when we talked about all the things we do. Our challenge, and the concern in B.C., is that British Columbians who go out camping, hiking, hunting and fishing will be excluded from these places. You talk about outcomes for conservation. If you throw the conservationists out, you are, in part, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. 

I think the broader challenge here is that you need people who buy into the outcomes of conservation designations, and who are there to support them and defend them, as opposed to removing them. 

Calkins: Do you see this legislation attempting to be conservation or preservation? 

Zeman: It looks like preservation. Certainly, given our experience over, probably, the last decade as it relates to the national park reserve and other discussions around the Nature Agreement, we don’t see ourselves in this future, for sure. 

Calkins: Okay. I want to talk about access. 

What is the concern insofar as access in a preservation model? I used to be a national park warden. I used to be a conservation officer with the Province of Alberta. I was a fisheries technician. I worked for the Government of Alberta and numerous conservation organizations “when I wore a younger man’s clothes,” as Billy Joel says. 

From your perspective as a Federation, could you please tell me what the concerns of your members are when it comes to being able to practice conservation-type activities, such as hunting and fishing, and differentiating that from other activities insofar as access? 

Zeman: Generally speaking, preservation is a hands-off approach, whereas conservation sees people as part of land management, wildlife management, and fish management. 

In the world of conservation, we talk about our projects. For example, we were just down in south Okanagan the other day. We were putting out a bunch more trail cameras where we’re looking to do a prescribed and cultural burn, which is active land management in the Okanagan. This is a fire-maintained ecosystem. A hundred years ago, we started suppressing fire. In the 1950s, we invented Smokey the Bear, a fraud who said, “Put out forest fires.” What we’re learning here is that forest fires and controlled, prescribed, and cultural burns are part of landscape management. Our ecosystems need fire to function. 

That would be the difference between conservation and preservation. 

Calkins: I agree with you. I think the people of Jasper fully understand, now, what the difference is between a preservation and a conservation model, and what happens when you sterilize, from human use and human activity, vast tracts of land without active conservation and management. For example, Jasper National Park did not do any wolf predation control and has since lost the caribou herds that spent most or some of their life cycle inside Jasper National Park. Yet, everybody outside Jasper National Park was blamed for that population decline. 

I think the overall goal here, for the government—through the United Nations framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity—is 30% by 2030, but it’s also 50% by 2050. When I went to university, the model was 12.5% preservation and 75% active management—12.5% is used by cities and so on. I don’t imagine that anybody in any urban environment is going to be asked to tear down their house to make way for nature. Who, then, is going to be asked to cede their land or territory? The question has been asked here about whether this would affect private land. Because it’s a process bill—and one could argue that the Species at Risk Act is a process act—it can very much impact a landowner. 

Can you tell us how the government could possibly get to 50% of the biozones in Canada without having an impact on privately owned land? 

Zeman: In 15 seconds? No. I cannot.  

Question from MP Michael Kram: Still with you, Mr. Zeman: The Premier of Yukon Territory and the territory’s Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources have publicly expressed their support for a project to connect the territory’s power grid to B.C.’s Site C hydro dam so that the territory can stop burning diesel. They’ve called this a “generational investment” and a “nation-building moment.” 

Mr. Zeman, can you speak to the effects of Bill C-73 on the future of major projects such as this? 

Zeman: I’m sorry. I’m not aware of the connection to Site C or the plan from Yukon down to B.C. In the world of major projects, our focus is really around the world of conservation. 

Generally speaking, our message here is that Ottawa is not connected to people who live in the communities who are impacted, or not impacted by conservation outcomes. I think that’s the message we’re trying to get across. I think everyone here should be cognizant of that. We talked about the national park reserve where that’s been introduced. There’s been tremendous social conflict in all of the communities. Prior to that, 44,000 hectares had been acquired and restored by groups like Ducks Unlimited, Nature Trust, Nature Conservancy and hunters and anglers, and no one had an issue. 

I think what we’re trying to get across here is that there’s a big place called Ottawa, and it is out of touch with communities and people who have their hands in the ground and are working together. That is one of the missing pieces in this Bill. 

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