Katy E@MargTokar:
Todd Loewen receives a yearly $5000 “stipend” from a hunting tour guide company in Valleyview. The UCP has poison running through it…
He is now listed online as the owner of that company, Red Willow Outfitters in Valleyview. Last year the UCP slit off hunting from hunting and fishing, and added it to Loewen’s ministry, Forestry, Parks and Tourism. And the grift continues.
Snap above taken Nov 7, 2024
rogerman@rogerman99:
“Stipend” is conservative for “kickback”.
@HearinYQF:
Why do Conservatives need to kill everything and everyone? Go shoot skeets ffs.
Dizzy @TinDizzy:
They just don’t find skeets quite as satiating as real, live, pain, suffering, blood and death. It’s the only thing that makes their [black hearts]s feel full and alive. They are a death cult after all.
@20xt6:
Any consultation with first nations that may be affected?
Carol MacVicar@carol_macvicar:
God this is cruel… how is this legal
Lori from TBay@LSantink:
Alberta’s government are the nastiest SOBs in the country.
Katy E@MargTokar:
I just found the company online. He’s actually listed as owner.
rogerman@rogerman99:
LoL. “Conflict of Interest”, the standard state of conservative legislators.
conservativeGraft
NeverVoteConservative
Sisu van Hellberta@sisuvanhell:
He has also employed – and is possibly still employing – a member/supporter of accelerationist hate group Diagalon as his constituency assistant in Valleyview part-time. Not shocking since Loewen is a convoyer, but also concerning that the government Oked it.
Cheryl Bozarth BSc@CherylBozarth:
Alberta government removes trapping limits for wolverine, fisher, lynx and river otter in most zones – Bow Valley News
Wolverine’s are ‘at risk’. This is beyond mismanagement fr the #UCP @YourAlberta
@Alberta_UCP ! What is going on? #ABLeg
Encourage Albertans to voice their concerns to @YourAlberta & send an email to Minister Todd Loewen email hidden; JavaScript is required.
Also support Alberta’s network of conservation organizations who support science based policy, not rhetorical whims! #wildlife #conservation #nature #ableg
No transparency, no consultation, & no sound scientific data to back putting open season on our most vulnerable wildlife populations.
Just one bad policy decision after another (see Grizzlies). Wildlife doesn’t stand a chance! Speak up! #ableg #abpoli
Digging into the archives, regarding the lack of data on #Wolverine populations in the #EasternSlopes.
This policy decision should have all Albertans asking how a single special interest group can get free access to consume ‘public’ wildlife?
peter s:
Can this government not be taken to court over its reckless environmental policies? Conservation in Alberta is non existent with this Loewen character running the show. Where are the opposition parties on these issues? I would love to leave some wild spaces and it’s animals for our grandchildren to enjoy which will not be the case with these PC policies they keep rolling out with impunity.
Why for human enjoyment? Why not allow wildlife to live for their sake, not ours?
Rebecca I:
Sadly, that IS sneaky. If they do it once, they’ll do it again. I too want to leave SOME wild spaces (at a minimum).
Aberta government removes trapping limits for wolverines, The Alberta government has removed furbearer trapping limits for the 2024-25 season in most zones, including for at-risk wolverines by Cathy Ellis, Nov 4, 2024, Rocky Mountain Outlook
CANMORE – The Alberta government has removed furbearer trapping limits for the 2024-25 season in most zones, including for at-risk wolverines.
The new regulations for this trapping season, approved by Alberta Forestry and Parks Minister Todd Loewen, remove limits in areas where open season currently exists, including for wolverine, lynx, fisher and river otter. A zero harvest remains in only a couple of trapping zones, but for lynx and wolverines, in zones where they don’t actually live.
“It’s the Wild West out there … Alberta continues to go backwards in wildlife management,” said John Marriott, co-founder of Exposed Wildlife Conservancy and prominent Canmore wildlife photographer.
“They’re just going to be doing open trapping all over the place and what effect is this going to have on biodiversity? It’s just open season on all these furbearers, which is just astonishing.”
Wolverines are considered data deficient in Alberta, meaning they may be at risk and should be managed accordingly.
The province’s most recent population estimate – now more than 20 years old – was fewer than 1,000 breeding animals.
Up until now, barring a couple of zones, only one wolverine could be trapped per trapper per registered fur trapping management area, a limit that has been in place for approximately 25 years.
The other species – lynx, fisher and river otter – have had higher limits, as much as 10 or 12 in some trapping units.
According to provincial statistics, the five-year average for wolverines killed in traps from 2019-24 was 66 – 53 in 2019-20; 115 in 2020-21; 46 in 2021-22; 51 in 2022-23; and 64 in 2023-24.
Loewen’s office did not get back to the Outlook by deadline and a spokesperson for the Alberta Trappers Association was not immediately available.
Sarah Elmeligi, Banff-Kananaskis MLA and NDP Shadow Minister for Environment and Protected Areas, said she was shocked when she heard the news of the regulation changes, questioning the justification behind the move to remove limits.
“I have pretty big concerns over the lack of transparency from this government when it comes to changes to hunting and trapping regulations over the last year,” she said.
“This is the first I’ve heard about it. We’re not hearing about it from the government, so the lack of transparency for this kind of stuff just drives me batty.”
Elmeligi said she was disturbed to hear the one limit per management unit for wolverine had been removed given the species is listed as data deficient in Alberta.
“Data deficient basically means there’s so few of them spread out over a large landscape that we don’t have enough information about wolverine to decide if they’re at risk or not,” she said.
“We don’t actually know enough about the species to know what the impact of that will be … and now there’s no limit. That’s obviously hugely concerning.”
Much like changes to grizzly bear management in Alberta earlier this year, Elmeligi said Loewen is not operating with wildlife management science in mind, nor is Environment and Protected Areas Minister Rebecca Schulz, who is charged with overseeing species-at-risk.
“They are not using science to inform decision-making and we keep seeing that again and again and again and it is a significant gap in how Alberta wildlife is being managed,” she said.
“So if the Minister of Forestry and Parks is not protecting species-at-risk and the Minister of Environment and Protected Areas is also not protecting species-at-risk, who is?”
Elmeligi said one of the solutions to better wildlife management is to more effectively engage experts and use current and robust wildlife science to inform decision-making, particularly around hunting and trapping limits.
“When we’re talking about hunting and trapping regulations, it’s really important that we have an understanding of population distribution and density at a provincial level because that’s how we understand what is happening for a species,” she said.
“That’s the information that feeds into truly defining sustainable hunting and we can’t define sustainable hunting levels through conversations with people at a town hall in one community because they do not understand the broader landscape picture, right?
“This is why we have wildlife science, like it’s the whole reason this whole field of knowledge exists.”
The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada consider wolverines a species of concern.
A 2019 study published in the Journal of Wildlife Management, The Sustainability of Wolverine Trapping Mortality in Southern Canada, concluded wolverine trapping in Alberta and British Columbia is not sustainable.
The study found wolverine density averaged two wolverines per 1,000 square kilometres and was positively related to spring snow cover and negatively related to road density. Observed annual trapping mortality was more than 8.4 per cent a year.
“This level of mortality is unlikely to be sustainable except in rare cases where movement rates are high among sub-populations and sizeable un-trapped refuges exist,” states the study.
“Our results suggest wolverine trapping is not sustainable because our study area was fragmented by human and natural barriers and few large refuges existed. We recommend future wolverine trapping mortality be reduced by 50 per cent throughout southern British Columbia and Alberta to promote population recovery.”
Another study, Protection status, human disturbance, snow cover and trapping drive density of a declining wolverine population in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, published in Scientific Reports in 2022 also raised alarm bells for wolverines.
That study looked at wolverine population trends from 2011-20 in a 14,000 square kilometre area in protected and non-protected lands in Alberta and B.C., determining wolverine density and occupancy declined by 39 per cent, with an annual population growth rate of 0.925.
Density within protected areas was three times higher than outside and declined between 2011 (3.6 wolverines/1000 km2) and 2020 (2.1 wolverines/1000 km2).
“The annual harvest rate of ≥ 13 per cent was above the maximum sustainable rate,” states the study.
Gilbert Proulx, a wildlife biologist and former head of the Humane Trapping Research Program who continues to do wildlife field research in Alberta, raised concerns about the recent changes to the province’s trapping regulations to “free-for-all trapping.”
He said when quotas are not applied to species like wolverine, which is listed as data deficient in Alberta, a void can be created, particularly if there is no close surveillance of the animals, including those accidentally trapped.
“When you remove an animal, you create a void and when you remove several of them, you can end up extirpating a local population,” he said, noting removal of a wolverine with a 400-square-kilometre home range can impact biodiversity.
“Removing the guards, removing the checks on any species is not very smart because if there is a crash or a provincial crash, then they have to see what happened, and then it’s too late, like we have seen in the past.”
Proulx said some parts of the trapping regulations also promote “false conservation”, noting trappers cannot take lynx and wolverine from zones 7 and 8 in the eastern parts of the province anyway.
“But they don’t even live in those areas. When you apply the conservation regulations to areas where the species is not present, you’re not accomplishing a whole lot,” he said.
“It’s like saying you’re not allowed to shoot elephants near Edmonton, but there are no elephants living near Edmonton.”
Meanwhile, Marriott said the changes to furbearer limits, including wolverine, is a “throwback to the past.”
“There are fewer and fewer wolverines than we thought and we know they’re in trouble,” he said.
“And yet, here we go, they’re just going to be doing open trapping all over the place on them.”
Marriott said Minister Loewen, who had been an avid trapper since he was a young boy, continues to defy what wildlife science says.
“It just goes against absolutely everything that we have done in wildlife management to this date,” he said.
“We should be much more restrictive on what we’re allowing to be trapped until we actually know what effect it’s having on the ecosystems. Right now, we know there’s a biodiversity crisis.”
Marriott referred to the decision as a “sneaky, underhanded way of management” by the provincial government.
“They’re not advertising any of this stuff because they know the public is going to be upset about it and they know there’s going to be a backlash,” he said.
“And so it’s just like ‘we’re just going to slip it in the back door as usual and then nobody will be able to do anything about it because we already did it’.”
… Strychnine poison has caused unimaginably painful deaths to so many wild creatures trying to survive. And your money is paying for it. This is an ongoing program by the Alberta government.
Out of a helicopter, employees of the Alberta government scan the remote wilderness trying to find a moose. When they do, they take their guns and shoot them from the sky. The moose dies and that’s just the start. They bait the moose meat with strychnine poisoning so that wildlife stumbling upon a seemingly lucky meal will die. Strychnine poison is a terrible way to go, causing painful and prolonged muscle spasms, all while remaining conscious until eventually the animal suffocates. It’s also deadly to humans and ought to be illegal. But it’s not, even though 69 per cent of Canadians say the risks posed by these poisons are unacceptable. It’s shameful to know that governments willingly put wildlife through such pain.
The reason for this remorseless process is under the guise of caribou protection. According to the Alberta government, this is needed to maintain low wolf numbers to protect caribou. But the poison isn’t selective to just wolves. Around the government-placed bait sites, concerned locals have documented collateral deaths of animals other than wolves. The poison ripples through the food chain.
Animals that eat the moose meat die with poison in their bodies, which poisons the next animals feeding on them, and it goes on and on until the poison levels dwindle below a lethal dose.
Animals found at government strychnine bait sites include, but are not limited to, bald eagles, golden eagles, coyotes, foxes, skunks, lynx, grizzly bears, cougars and even caribou.
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