Guns at ready as farmers try to save crops
RURAL REVOLUTION Group wants right to shoot animals that destroy profits
John Vanderspank stands in his flattened cornfield and wonders who is the bigger threat to his life as a farmer: The bear that’s eating his crops or the government that’s hauling him through court?
This week, Mr. Vanderspank and his neighbour Merle Bowes, both lifelong farmers, showed some of what they have to put up with — swaths of cornfields flattened by bears and eaten by deer and raccoons.
“ There’s a crop worth harvesting, isn’t it?” says Mr. Bowes, pointing to half an acre of his friend’s destroyed corn in Lanark County, Ont. “They’re just rolling through my fields like crazy right now,” says Mr. Vanderspank.
Mr. Bowes, who spent $20,000 on government-encouraged deer fences for his vegetable fields, says he lost $3,000 worth of vegetables in a single night last year.
“ We’re already dealing with enough problems: Low prices and high costs,” says Mr. Bowes. “This type of damage is not bearable. Economically it’s not bearable.”
But Mr. Vanderspank and Mr. Bowes, a vegetable farmer, say they are also battling the government with its convoluted rules, paperwork, the shuttling to government offices, meetings, big public spending and intrusive officials poking around their farms.
Mr. Vanderspank is also fighting the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources in court, charged with several illegal hunting offences stemming from a hunting protest at his farm on Ferguson Falls Road last year.
Mr. Vanderspank, vice-president of the Lanark Landowners’ Association, is one of a number of farmers who call their cause, “ the Rural Revolution” and want the ability to run farms without excessive government interference.
If there’s a farmers’ protest against the government in Eastern Ontario, Mr. Vanderspank will be there. He believes the current legal action to be intimidation, a retaliation for all of the inyourprotests held in the last few years.
The Rural Revolution includes having a free hand to shoot animals that come onto their property to eat their crops.
In recent years, Eastern Ontario counties, such as Lanark, have been inundated with deer and other wildlife. In Mr. Vanderspank’s case, his farm losses — for a cash-crop operation that covers 1,000 acres of owned and rented property — totalled $30,000 to $40,000 some years.
The Ministry of Natural Resources responded by expanding the hunting season and by allowing farmers who have proven crop losses to apply for Deer Removal Authorizations, which allow them or licensed hunters they enlist, to shoot deer outside the fall hunting season. Indeed, Mr. Vanderspank, who is charged with aiding illegal hunting of white- tailed deer and groundhogs on his property, has such an authorization to shoot deer on his farm. He regularly updates the authorization documentation with the ministry to get new names of hunters to patrol his huge property.
The wildlife situation has improved at his farm, where he grows wheat, corn and hay, as well as soybeans destined for Japan. Mr. Vanderspank figures his losses this year will be about $10,000 to $ 15,000.
Ross Stewart, Mr. Vanderspank’s lawyer, says the losses suffered by these farmers due to wildlife damage are serious enough to threaten their businesses. “They’re just trying to protect their livelihood,” says Mr. Stewart. “ These are just honest, hard-working guys who I think have got caught up in some pretty extensive bureaucratic red tape.”
Mr. Bowes, also a vice-president of the Lanark Landowners’ Association, says he began trying to get the provincial government to do something about the exploding deer population in 1996. “It’s been nothing but frustrating,” he says. “I’ve sat at my table in the winter time just about pulling my hair out.
“ The best thing for me to do, because of deer, was just quit. Just quit. And it wasn’t as though this was an animal that was not abundant.”
The farmers feel environmentalists and animal lovers have more of a say on the management of farmland than the farmers who own the land and raise the crops to feed the province.
They are also upset that they are treated as potentially dangerous persons by Natural Resources staff. Government officers swooped down on Ferguson Falls last June, with a team that included a small aircraft and a canine unit. If Mr. Vanderspank is convicted of any of the offences he is charged with under the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act, the possible penalties are fines of up to $25,000 or one year in jail.
“ It’s always been threats, it’s always been enforcement and intimidation,” says Mr. Vanderspank.
Steve Aubry, enforcement supervisor for Natural Resources in Eastern Ontario, says conservation officers must enforce the law and lay charges when they see infractions of regulations.
Mr. Aubry says last year’s event at Ferguson Falls was advertised as an illegal hunt, so officers were present to protect public safety, enforce the law that protects wildlife and ensure that any hunters were licensed to hunt.
The ministry says that it has given Deer Removal Authorizations to 59 farmers in Eastern Ontario this year, paperwork that allows farmers to “ harass and/ or remove” deer when other methods of control have failed.
The continuing friction with the Ministry of Natural Resources has taken a toll, says Mr. Vanderspank. “The stress this last couple of years, with MNR chasing me so hard, it’s been unbelievable. It’s been hard on my family life,” says Mr. Vanderspank.
“ You kind of end up getting possessed by it. You’re always looking over your shoulder.”
He hopes for an end to the legal fight.
“ All we’re trying to do is save our crops. We’re trying to make a living. We just want to farm,” he says.