Early Registration Draw 2024

Purchase your 2025 membership by Tuesday, December 31st for your chance to win a rifle and scope setup!

This year’s prize:

Weatherby Vanguard Badlands Edition Rifle chambered in 6.5PRC. Comes with Talley rail and Talley rings topped with a Vortex Diamondback 4-12x40 DeadHold BDC reticle scope (bipod is not included).

The rifle is foresighted and ready to hit the range.

All 2025 memberships purchased before January 1st will be entered into the draw. The winner of the draw will be announced at the antler scoring event in late January.

A big thank you to Westside Stores in Salmon Arm for helping us getting this organized and giving us a deal!

We have a 50/50 winner!

A big congratulations to our 50/50 raffle winner! 🎟️

Thank you to everyone who purchased tickets and helped us raise funds for the North Trench Elk Project (learn more about the project here).

Your support is making a difference in wildlife conservation, and we’re grateful for your generosity. Stay tuned for updates on the project and future opportunities to get involved!

Remove politics from wildlife management, it’s time for an independent wildlife management agency

When governments use wildlife as a pawn in political games to court favor from their base, wildlife suffers, and British Columbians suffer, too.

Examples of our provincial and federal governments ignoring science, muzzling their own scientists, and bargaining away public access to public lands are depressingly numerous.

The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada has repeatedly recommended an emergency listing order under the Species at Risk Act (SARA) for the Chilcotin and Thompson River steelhead, which have dwindled to just a few dozen fish. Politicians have consistently failed to heed the advice of their own experts and use SARA to its fullest extent to protect at-risk populations.

When British Columbia was handed a court decision compelling the government to address industrial encroachment on First Nations land, it responded, but not by following the direction of the court. Instead, they reduced the moose harvest by 50 per cent and closed the caribou hunt completely across the region, while 195 gas, oil, and forestry projects were allowed to continue. 

B.C.’s approach to this settlement is deeply unnerving. The court’s ruling does not even mention hunting as a factor in the infringement of the Blueberry Nation’s Treaty 8 rights, but somehow curtailing hunting became the remedy. 

When access to the outdoors and the natural assets of this province become bargaining chips to be dealt away for industrial development and political gain, we all lose. How long will it be before unabated access to large swaths of public land causing disruption to wildlife migration, rearing and other critical habitats are lost to all British Columbians?

B.C. researchers have found that people believe that fish and wildlife management is not well-funded, that government is shirking its duty, and that decisions about wildlife management should be made by professionals, based on science, rather than by elected officials. In B.C. the proportion of the Provincial Budget spent on renewable resource management has steadily decreased, in 2024, less than 1% of the Provincial Budget will be spent on renewable resource management. B.C. is failing on every count.

Management of fish and wildlife should be the responsibility of an agency independent of the government, one that is not influenced by commercial interests or popularity contests. Objectives need to be legislated and science-based to ensure that all wildlife populations are afforded legal protections that force the government of Canada to act.

When the provincial government tried to rush through changes to the Land Act, citizens pushed back hard, sensing that their opportunities to enjoy the land, water, and bounty of British Columbia was at risk. Their sham public consultation process was halted, at least temporarily.

Public consultation must be genuine, if British Columbians are to embrace substantial changes in the way that public resources are co-managed. All British Columbians deserve a say in their shared future. It’s time to move away from secret negotiations, hijacked process, and agreements which are neither shared with nor debated by British Columbians until it is too late. British Columbians are tired of engaging on regulations knowing that the decision has already been made behind closed doors.

An agency that is independent of the government influence is needed to ensure that decisions about natural resources, angling, hunting, and access to public lands are made based on science, not political expediency.

Ask questions of your candidates and demand answers. Is their party prepared to put in place an independent agency if elected?

Provincial funding for wildlife management and resource stewardship must increase

The government’s capacity to manage wildlife has declined steadily for decades. Their ability to conduct meaningful science and inventories is scraping along at rock bottom.  Wildlife populations are down, with iconic species teetering on the brink of extinction.

British Columbia has changed dramatically over the years. The number of people has increased, as has the need for housing and jobs, but the residential and industrial sprawl has encroached on the wilderness that drew many of us here in the first place. 

Government revenue is going up, but we are not investing it in natural resource management. In fact, the proportion of government expenditures spent on fish and wildlife has dropped by 75 per cent between 1993 and today.

Funding for fish and wildlife management in British Columbia is estimated at about $7 per capita and in Alberta about $9 per capita. Contrast that with expenditures in nearby jurisdictions such as Washington ($29), Montana ($91), and Alaska ($235). 

In 2024, BC will spend less than 1% of the annual provincial budget on wildlife management! Despite having one of the most bio-diverse regions in North America, we spend less per person, less per animal, and less per square kilometer than our neighbors and it shows!

Wildlife is supposed to be managed as a public, shared resource for the benefit of all Canadians. One of the ways that this resource is shared by many British Columbians is as a food source. Many of us choose to feed our families with fresh, organic wild meat rather than processed, factory-farmed proteins. Hunters, more than anyone, want wildlife populations to be healthy and plentiful so that we can harvest a small percentage.

Hunters are willing to pay for this privilege; we pay a surcharge on licenses and tags, amounting to about 20 per cent of fees paid, which funds wildlife and habitat enhancement via the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation. When asked, hunters have told B.C. researchers they would pay even more if those fees were dedicated to supporting wildlife. That same research found that hunters overwhelmingly support handing wildlife management over to an agency independent of government.

Hunters are adamant that their highest priorities for wildlife management are that it be sustainable for future generations and that decisions should be driven by science. Unfortunately, the decline of funding for wildlife management has severely curtailed data collection, which means we don’t have a good understanding about the health of many species and wildlife populations. You cannot manage what you cannot count.

Research respondents strongly believe that elected officials cannot be trusted to follow science, act for future generations, or to spend money wisely. We have seen our government curtail hunting in backroom deals to expand industrial activities that do real harm to wildlife. This must end.

Dedicated, annual funding of a minimum $200 million for renewable resource management is required. These funds should be derived from hunting license fees and charges, wildlife act fines, and from any activity that impacts wildlife and its habitat such as forestry, oil and gas extraction, mining, wildlife viewing, ecotourism, and backcountry recreational activities and other revenue sources deemed necessary to reach this target. 

We must dedicate a sensible portion of the provincial budget to natural resource management and rededicate ourselves to data collection and quality scientific analysis for the health of B.C.’s iconic species.

It’s time to review how we spend our dollars. It’s time for government to act responsibly as to relates to funding renewable resource management.

It’s time to Put Wildlife First.

Ask your candidates if their party will increase dollars for renewable resource management and how much?