Industry groups are working with OMAFRA to improve payments to farmers who suffer damage to livestock from wildlife
By Jackie Clark
Staff Writer
Farms.com
The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) has made changes to the Ontario Wildlife Compensation Program for the 2021 year, according to a Jan. 8 release from the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA). The OFA has lobbied, alongside Beef Farmers of Ontario and Ontario Sheep Farmers to make the program simpler and more helpful to producers.
“It’s a program that the sheep farmers use every year,” Jennifer MacTavish, general manager of Ontario Sheep Farmers, told Farms.com. “The sheep industry, probably more so than most other livestock industries, is impacted by predation every year.”
The industry groups requested changes that “focus on making the program more user-friendly and making sure that the payments to producers happen in a timely manner,” she explained. “OMAFRA’s been really willing to sit down with us to talk through some of the changes that we want to see happen to make the program easier for our farmers and more responsive to our farmers.”
Over the past two years the program has made administrative improvements and allowed secondary evidence to be included as primary evidence, said the release. In the 2021 program year, OMAFRA will notify municipalities of an applicants approved claim and initiate payments when the decision is made, instead of waiting until the end of an appeal period. The administrator will also have the authority to waive deadlines.
“Those aren’t significant changes to the program, but they are changes in terms of ensuring our farmers are going to receive their payments faster,” MacTavish said.
If a producer has livestock damaged or killed by wildlife and need to use this program “the first thing I’d recommend is that they start taking pictures right away,” she explained. “Start documenting evidence immediately, they don’t need to wait for an investigator. So, if they see paw prints or evidence of where the predator got in or photos of what remains of the (livestock). They need to start documenting evidence as soon as they see it.”
The producer should contact their municipal investigator and do what they can to preserve the evidence until the investigator can get there, she added. The investigator will fill out paperwork on behalf of the farmer, so farmers should verify that those forms are complete and correct.
“The investigator can use the pictures they take as evidence,” MacTavish explained. When filling out forms, farmers should provide “as much detail as possible about what happened.”
That information may include factors such as weather conditions and how they may have impacted evidence or whether you had heard or seen evidence of predators prior to the incident.
“Anything that can help set the scene and give a visual of what happened is going to help get those claims pushed through,” she explained. “When you think you’ve taken enough pictures, take more pictures. And then be as detailed as you can in that form, and when you think you’ve been detailed enough add more detail.”
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