Provincial officials have sensibly expanded the Report A Poacher hotline service to cover infractions of the Public Lands Act.
“The Report A Poacher line has been established for a number of years and functions well, so this is just one more add-on to it,” said Wayne Crocker, land management specialist with Alberta Environment and Parks.
Since the protection of wildlife intuitively goes hand in hand with safeguarding ecosystems, expanding the hotline to include Public Lands Act violations simply made sense, he said.
“It seems like an efficient way to deal with multiple (related) legislative acts.”
It's hard to argue with that. Any activity that threatens natural habitat by extension also threatens the wildlife that calls it home. So Albertans who are concerned about potentially destructive activity they're seeing on public land can call the same hotline they would contact to report direct abuse to wildlife.
And people have been calling to report concerns since the changes were introduced to the hotline last spring, said Crocker.
“There is a way to gauge it in the number of responses to complaints that were over and above the Fish and Wildlife Act — it's definitely up,” he said about the volume of calls the hotline has fielded since the expansion was introduced.
Some of the more common public land use infractions include water violations, such as the operator of an off-highway vehicle tearing the vehicle up and down a river or creek bed. But there are also issues with garbage and other discarded or abandoned items including old vehicles and appliances.
“Both (Alberta Environment and) Parks enforcement and Fish and Wildlife have an increased number of violation tickets and court appearances and warnings that they have given out around the Public Lands Act,” said Crocker.
This obviously does not come as good news to those who would treat the environment as their own personal dumping grounds while the rest of us stand by dumbfounded, scratching our heads as we try to figure how and why a person could so callously treat his or her own environment so poorly.
Fortunately, the bulk of the West Country's recreational land users strive to be responsible, and most abuses stem from a lack of knowledge or information — violations are not always intentional and public education is equally as important as efforts to enforce regulations, said Crocker.
But an even smaller portion of infractions is the result of sheer willful neglect. Even so, provincial authorities have seen improvements in terms of the public's behaviour on Crown lands.
“People are starting to get it. But because there are so many users, we have to maintain education and enforcement,” Crocker told the Round Up.
Of course the provincial government only has so many resources available when it comes to maintaining a physical presence to enforce the Wildlife and Public Lands Acts, so anyone who spots infractions is encouraged to report them as soon as possible by calling 1-800-642-3800.
