The animals have been coming down out of the hills and into the low lands this year, destroying farmers’ crops and fields at a rate that set off warning bells in Victoria enough to inspire them to create a program to compensate farmers and growers for their losses due to the exploding B.C. wildlife.

This is great news for the farmers affects by the sudden arrival of hordes of deer, moose, elk and even bears coming down to feast on their crops. Many in the Peace River, Caribou, and Kootenay regions have reported significant damage to their crops by invading animals; we seem to forget they were here first, and the helplessness of their situation. That the numbers of hungry arrivals are too huge to control and they generally have their way with fields, despite farmers’ efforts to scare them off.

There is one small hitch that goes along with this new compensation program designed to help out the farmers struggling to protect their crops and livelihood from hordes of hungry animals, they have to built cages in their fields to keep the deer, moose, elk and bears away from sample areas that will be used to gauge their losses due to grazing animals.

If all goes well and they can prove their losses they can be compensated up to 80 percent of verified losses, with insured losses being exempt from compensation. There are a few requirements they must meet though to be eligible for the compensation, a minimum of 10 percent damage to their crops must have occurred, they can only get a maximum compensation of $2,500 in 2008, and they must commit to established mitigation and prevention tactics.

A problem certainly, but one that can be overcome, if proper choices and management techniques are implemented to help combat the invasion of hungry animals from areas they were probably pushed out of by competition and lack of resources to begin with. Mother Nature would normally handle population explosions in her own time and way, but then the farmers don’t have the time to wait for nature to follow its natural course in such events.

Doesn’t sound nice, but maybe we should consider putting down a percentage of the over populated species that are eating these important crops, at least the meat could be used then to feed hungry people in nearby communities. Not something an Earth Sheppard wants to see, but then reality usually bites down hard, when you aren’t expecting it or desiring it.