Bobolinks create farm landlord fears

Monday, January 2, 2012

A small black and white bird appears to have put fear into the hearts of landlords in Halton Region, west of Toronto. Campbellville's Peter Lambrick, local director for the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA), says a number of farmers have told him that landlords are instructing them to rip up hayfields and plant crops. They fear that they will never be able to develop fields identified as Bobolink habitat.

The bobolink was listed as "threatened" in September 2010, following a downturn in reported numbers. The birds nest in hay fields between late May and mid-July, prime time for harvesting a high quality crop. Last year, the province exempted farmers for three years from Endangered Species Act requirements on haying and use of pasture lands, but landlords who rent to farmers remain unhappy. "It doesn't matter how clear you have been that you have a three-year reprieve," says OFA past president Bette Jean Crews, who co-chairs the bobolink committee of Species at Risk Program Advisory Committee. Landlords are saying "they don't want any history of hay."

Crews says it's still early, but some solutions are in the works. An example she cites is that a gravel pit operator might pay farmers next door to grow hay and delay harvesting to provide habitat for birds exiled from the pit area.

There's also a concept called "safe harbour." A farmer can voluntarily agree to put some land into habitat with the agreement that it be brought into farming again in five years. The theory is that if there are enough safe harbours around, there will be more habitat for species. BF