YORKTON - Road allowances can be an important habitat for wildlife.
To promote preserving the habitat, and to invite people to use and enjoy the public land the Yellowhead Flyway Birding Trail Association (YFBTA) has launched a Road Allowance Project (AKA ‘Skip the Ditches’).
The official launch of the project took place Wednesday, May 17, at the Morley Maier farm south of Yorkton.
The event saw those gathered tour the roads being marked with signage culminating in the installation of one of three signs on the roads.
The idea for the project emerged out of the 2022 YFBTA Annual General Meeting when “a committee was struck to look into what could be done to bring the public’s attention to the importance of preserving and having access to road allowance habitat within rural municipalities,” detailed the February issue of the organization’s newsletter.
People should also recognize that the recent ‘Trespass to Property Legislation’ does not include road allowances.
The importance of road allowances has been noted by others too.
“Every scrap of public land is precious in a province that has privatized 85 per cent of its prairie ecozone (and is working hard to sell off the rest). One type of public land that gets little attention is the undeveloped road allowance, a strip of natural landscape that is supposed to run along the edge of many sections of farmland in Saskatchewan,” wrote Trevor Herriot in his online blog.
“. . . Historically, road allowances formed ribbons of nature around cultivated land, a wild kingdom belonging to no man where anyone was free to hunt, walk, camp, pick berries; where badgers, meadowlarks, and burrowing owls thrived, and where the lady slipper and the monarch butterfly took refuge.”
The YFBTA committee met and after discussion it was decided to install a sign at each end of a designated road allowance promoting the value of road allowance habitat and inviting ‘All to Enjoy’.
The signs are installed on road allowances with the permission of the rural municipality in order to bring attention to the valuable habitat that lies within the road allowance boundary.
The YFBTA has funded the creation of 80 signs to-date which have been installed at road allowance location in for east central RMS; Saltcoats, Orkney, Wallace and Cana.
“Rural Saskatchewan is changing. Land prices are high and going higher. Land speculators and farm corporations are buying land, clearing the land of bush, clearing old farmsteads and draining sloughs and potholes to enhance the value of the land. Road allowances have not escaped the bulldozers and the trac-hoes. In some cases road allowances have lost much of the habitat within their boundaries,” detailed the YFBTA newsletter.
“Road allowances are not owned by corporations or land speculators. They are controlled by the Rural Municipality and thus all ratepayers within the municipality. They provide access to all when passable. They provide valuable native habitat for many diverse plants and animals.
“Road allowances are important. Signs are installed as a reminder that road allowances should be preserved for ‘All to Enjoy’.”
YFBTA received a number of donations to defray expenditures. Additional donations are invited and may be directed to Monique Smith Secretary-Treasurer YFBTA, Box 252 Saltcoats, Saskatchewan S0A 3R0
