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ADDITIONAL CONSERVATION OFFICER SERVICE SUPPORT (2025)

2025
Environment & Climate Change
Public Safety

Issue

The BC Conservation Officer Service needs additional resources to adequately address public safety, focus on natural resource law enforcement, off-road vehicle enforcement, illegal dumping, human-wildlife conflict prevention, and respond to wildlife-human conflict. Keeping these conflicts to a minimum helps work crews involved in mining exploration, tree planting, and pipeline and power line maintenance stay safe, while also assisting ecotourism operators and wilderness recreation users in having a safe and fun experience.

 

Background

Since 1905, the BC Conservation Officer Service has served as the province’s “natural resource law enforcement agency specializing in public safety as it relates to human/wildlife conflict.” Today’s COS is structured into three units: Provincial Operations (uniformed officers), Provincial Investigations Unit (investigations), and Program Support. Conservation Officers based in 45 communities across BC are responsible for enforcing 33 federal and provincial statutes, working with private and public partners such as the Ministry of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations Resource Officers, the RCMP, Environment Canada, the Department of Fisheries, First Nations, and local and provincial stakeholders[1].

In other words, their job is to protect business assets and keep operations running, while keeping business customers, employees and the general population safe, just like police and fire services.

Yet the BC Government’s last significant investment in the BC Conservation Officer Service was in 2018, when 20 new COs were hired, to bring the staffing levels to 150. [2]

While the number of black bears killed by COs fell by half in 2024, the previous year set a new record with 603 bears destroyed.[3] The number of calls for service from the public has steadily increased, in both urban and rural communities, as new housing developments increasingly encroach into what had previously been wildlife spaces.[4] The growing prevalence of wildfires and flooding may also be driving bears, moose and other wildlife out of their habitat towards the food sources found where humans live and work.[5]

Meanwhile, the shortage of BC Conservation Officers has led to untrained police officers forced to respond to wildlife-human conflicts[6]. This further heightens the need for more resources devoted to the BC Conservation Officer Service.

 

THE CHAMBER RECOMMENDS

That the Provincial Government:

  1. Provide additional funding, offices, and staffing for the BC Conservation Officer (OC) Service to reduce the caseload for individual COs and more effectively manage conservation services.