The Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation has gone on record with its concerns about the impending closure of nineteen rural Ministry of Environment Offices, with Moose Jaw's office being one of the 19 slated for closure.

One of the many problems with the closures is the break in communication and services that they create. Executive Director of the Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation, Darrell Crabbe, notes that the offices are the sole point of contact between the public and ministry staff.

"They are the face to face interaction points across Saskatchewan," explains Crabbe, "and there are only going to be thirteen of them left in our province that have any time throughout the week to field inquiries."

He continues by saying that hunting and angling generate over $600 million annually with the majority of that revenue being derived from rural Saskatchewan.

"When I talk about the economic impact, $600 million is a major contributor to the economy of Saskatchewan. We find it difficult to understand the logic of doing this. We think it's somewhat of a misguided decision and would like the government to reconsider it very deeply before they move down this track."

Crabbe goes on to note, "License fees generate somewhere in the neighbourhood of $13-14 million a year into the coffers, yet we see less and less investment by the government each year into this industry."

Another of the Federation's concerns is the decrease in the number of licenses issued due to free licenses being issued or consideration given to various demographic groups. One such group is senior citizens who are no longer required to purchase angling or hunting licenses.

Crabbe explains, "We can't even track the numbers of seniors that are getting free licenses; however, we can estimate that there are about 40,000 of them. If we took 30% of their license fees – if they were paying for license - that alone would generate close to $500,000 a year, which would put about a million dollars in the 70% that goes into general revenue for the government."

Crabbe suggests that if a larger portion of licensing fees were directed to environmental services instead of general revenues, the Environment offices would be able to remain open and they would be able to hire more conservation officers.

"If you take the #1 Highway as a benchmark or as a geographical positioning on this, everything south of the #1 Highway the only two offices that will remain open will be the one in Swift Current and the one in Regina. Look at the number of people that come into our province through the southern border for hunting and angling, and we don't even have an office in Estevan."

The 19 rural Ministry of Environment offices are slated to close between April 1st and October 1st, 2019.