Mandatory Reporting of Moose and Caribou Hunting

The public is invited to comment on the proposed hunting regulation described below.

Status: Proposed

Region: Province-wide

Management unit (MU): Province-Wide

Regulation type: General Open Season, Limited Entry Hunting

Species: Moose, Caribou

Closing date: 16:30, March 22, 2024

Decision statement: Pending

Current regulation

Currently responding to the hunter sample survey or the Limited Entry Hunting survey is voluntary for licensed hunters.

Hunters that harvest a caribou anywhere in B.C., and a moose in specific locations, must submit the animal for Compulsory Inspection. Hunters that harvest a moose in region 7B must conduct compulsory reporting.

Proposed regulation

All individuals who purchased a species licence for moose or caribou, regardless of whether a moose or caribou is harvested, are required to submit a report on their hunting activity for those species by January 15 of the license year the species license was purchased.

Individuals who fail to submit a required report by the deadline will not be able to purchase hunting licences, fishing licences, or apply for LEH draws until their report is submitted. Failure to submit a required report is an offence.

Rationale

Wildlife managers rely on accurate and precise information on wildlife harvest and hunter effort. These data are critical for tracking population abundance, determining harvest allocations, and evaluating wildlife management strategies.  The current system of estimating hunter harvest and effort through voluntary surveys provides reliable and useful estimates for most hunts, but there are situations where the available data does not provide a harvest estimate reliable enough for management purposes. Harvest estimates are often augmented by Compulsory Inspections or Compulsory Reporting of harvested animals when harvest requires close monitoring or when biological samples are required. However, the costs of this system are prohibitive for broad expansion, and it does not significantly improve the quality of data for estimating hunter effort (i.e. days hunted). 

Requiring all moose and caribou species licence holders to report their hunting activity would greatly increase the amount of data available for estimating harvest and hunter effort and thereby improve the precision of these estimates. This will lead to improved population monitoring and more informed management decisions.

Additional information