The Edmonton Sun
Mar 27, 2004
Page: 70
Section: Travel
Edition: Final
Column: Outdoors

BY NEIL WAUGH

This may seem a little out of place but "Happy New Year.''

No, I didn't just thaw out of a snowbank or snap awake from a long winter's slumber. It really is the beginning of a new 365. The start of something fresh. Heck, even the government says so.

The calendar year may say we're already into 2004 by almost three months. But the Fishing Year begins right here, right now. Or at least next Thursday. Although some would say it doesn't really kick in until the May long weekend when the pike and walleye lakes open up again after the spring spawn. But you still need a licence.
And you need to renew it by April 1.

It's also the time of year when you start pulling out maps, making plans, sketching mental must-do lists and dreaming about the season that's about to unfold.

I've just gotta spend some more time fishing the Swan Hills this year. But I have to go back to the Coal Branch this summer, too. Can you catch those monster Cold Lake lakers on a fly just after ice-out? I'd love to find out.

There's that necklace of grayling creeks in the Marten Hills that I've been looking at on a forestry map for years. And the Border Country trout holes: Captain Eyre, Dillberry and Blood Indian, plus all my usual places: Stauffer, Prairie, East Pit, Hasse, North Saskatchewan goldeye, Pigeon walleye, Wabamun pike, maybe a Bow float with my buddy Barry White. I almost forgot our new local trophy trout lake - Muir.

Even thinking about all the possibilities can become a traumatic experience. But it's the time of year when fishing is more fantasy than real. I'll get back to you in September and tell you how it went.

It's also the time of year when the government sets its budget. And after Finance Minister Pat Nelson's pitiful performance on Wednesday, it will snap you back to reality really fast.

"It's extremely disappointing and that's the bottom line,'' sighed Alberta Fish and Game Association president Ray Makowecki.

Alberta New Democrat MLA Brian Mason went one better. "I think they have virtually declared a free fire zone on the Eastern Slopes,'' Mason thundered. "It just demonstrates the utter contempt this government has for this vital function.''

This is certainly a long way from Nelson, who babbled on about "helping secure the kind of future we all want for ourselves, out families and our province'' in her budget speech.

Except you wouldn't know it from her $22-billion budget. Especially when it comes to preserving and protecting Alberta's vital fish and wildlife resources.

Sustainable Resource Development Minister Mike Cardinal's Fish and Wildlife Division budget was frozen again at just a little over $39.8 million. Roll in inflation and the fact Cardinal has to carve $2 million out of it for his commercial fishing licence buyout program - plus a costly increase in grizzly bear monitoring, which was the tradeoff for maintaining a hunt - and the division's effective operating budget just suffered another serious slash.

And don't forget, this is the year that Cardinal has to implement Premier Ralph Klein's pet project - the ban on barbed fishhooks which starts next week.

"Just last year fish and wildlife officers complained they were having to buy their own gas and were completely unable to do their job,'' Mason said.

What he's getting at is last summer's disturbing memo from the head of enforcement for the critical Eastern Slopes region which imposed gas rationing on fish and wildlife officers, banned weekend and holiday work and suspended routine patrols because of the serious budget crunch imposed on the division by their Tory political masters.

At the same time they were forced to devote scarce resources to picking up dead crows and magpies as window dressing for Health Minister Gary Mar's silly West Nile disease program. Mar's bloated budget this year will hit $8 billion, mainly because the timid Red Tory can't say no to doctors' and nurses' double-digit wage demands.

So fish and wildlife officers will once again likely have to park their trucks this summer and hand the green area over to the poachers, outlaw quadders and other bad guys who would destroy our precious fish and game resources.

"The feedback we get from officers and biologists is that morale is as low as it can get,'' Makowecki snapped. "We hear people constantly saying we can't even drive our darned vehicles.''

And he's particularly concerned about fish population studies that have been put off for years after the pike and walleye recovery programs were slapped on numerous lakes almost a decade ago.

Catch-and-release angling is turning a lot of Albertans off buying a licence, Makowecki says. Yet there appears to be little money available to do population studies to find out if some lakes have come back enough to allow a limited harvest.

Makowecki is also worried that the PCs have pretty well declared open season for poachers because of the budget cut.

"There are all sorts of activities in the backcountry that need some sort of enforcement,'' the former fish cop said. "When you stop their involvement out in the field it certainly hurts the resource.''

And Makowecki is particularly concerned that a big lobbying push by fish and game members in January fell on deaf Tory MLA ears.

The man in the middle, Mike Cardinal, was candid enough to reveal exactly what happened in the buildup to Nelson's brutal budget.

"Basically all ministers were given directions to operate this fiscal year within the existing budget,'' he said.

Except, of course, for Mar's big blowout. While the same rules also didn't apply to Learning Minister Lyle Oberg.

Cardinal says he's "monitoring'' the situation. He insists that the staff "seem to be adjusting very well,'' and 2004 will be a year when "we will find out for sure how tight it's going to be with the budget.'' What, 2003 wasn't?

"I have no problem going back four months down the road and saying, 'look we have a gap and a weakness here and we need more dollars,' '' Cardinal said. "It's our resource and I think most people value the fish and wildlife resources and the environment.

"You will see white trucks,'' he vowed. Even though they're mostly parked.

"We're extremely concerned,'' said Makowecki.

"They're condemning a substantial amount of our fish and wildlife population to a death sentence with their inaction,'' added Mason.

Did I say Happy New Year? I think I'll take that back.