Economic impact of wildlife on farms

LETHBRIDGE – A variety of animals live in southern Alberta.  Some are on farms and some are wildlife that find their way onto farms. Alberta Beef Producers is conducting a survey to determine the economic impact wildlife have on producers when they damage farms and farm animals.

Alberta has more cattle than any other province. There are 20,000 farms with 5.5-million cattle that share the land with wildlife. Sometimes there are conflicts with grizzly bears, wolves and other wildlife.

“In the Cardston area and even in the Pincher area there are quite a few grizzlies,”  said Fred Hays from Alberta Beef Producers. “They can be a problem for producers there.”

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The survey by Alberta Beef Producers and the Miistakis Institue at Mount Royal University needs 2000 producers to be successful.  It  can be found at www.beefsurvey.ca

Tracy Lee from the Miistakis Institute said, “One of the purposes of this is to find out how big an issue this is so we’re encouraging all producers whether you have interactions with wildlife or not to fill in the survey so we can get a good understanding of is this localized, are there areas which are more had hit that we should be focusing on or is it ocuring across the province.”

Co-existing with wildlife often results in economic impacts including animal or feed loss, property damage, the costs of damage prevention and producer management dealing with wildlife.

Lee said information from the survey could be used in a number of ways.   “This could come up in the context of compensation programs.  It could come up in the context of new programs that are being developed to promote co-existence such as different types of mitigation,” she said. “But overall I think the purpose of our survey is really to provide the background context for how big an issue this really is.”

Alberta Beef Producers said geese can even cause problems by getting into swaths producers have put up as feed for winter.

The survey will wrap up on March 5th.