Retired game warden gives look at his profession

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on October 19, 2024.

Herald photo by Al Beeber Retired fish and wildlife officer Jim Mitchell talks at SACPA Thursday about his 38 year career with the provincial government.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

Jim Mitchell spent more than 38 years working as a Fish and Wildlife officer in Alberta and on Thursday he gave insights on his profession at the weekly meeting of the Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs.

Mitchell said his interest in wildlife protection came from his father who died when the speaker was only 14 years old. It was after that loss that Mitchell decided he would make it his life’s career to protect the fish and wildlife resources of his home province.

“He instilled the love of fish and wildlife into me, taking me hunting and fishing until his passing. After he passed, I made the decision that I wanted to become somebody that would protect the resource and save the resource for people that came after us,” Mitchell told the audience.

In 1979, after graduating from high school, the Lethbridge native applied to attend Lethbridge College.

His career started in 1981 in Barrhead and two years later he was transferred to Red Deer. He was promoted to a district officer and moved to High River where he spent 13 years.

In 1998, he took up residence in Sundre and in 2008 when his daughter began studying at the University of Lethbridge, a job opening came up as superintendent for southern Alberta so Mitchell took on that role for about a decade, retiring in 2019.

He recently learned a great grandfather was a gameskeeper in England “and it’s very interesting because some people say that it must run in my blood,” he said.

When he started writing a book called “Alberta Game Warden – Behind the Badge of 172,” a friend gave him a book of the game laws of England. When Mitchell began reading the book that dates back to the year 1736, he saw that the preface expressed a similar sentiment to what is held to be true by courts to this day: ‘ignorance of the law excuseth no man.'”

The book explains the powers of game wardens in that era and 300 years later, the powers are still similar, he said.

Alberta hired its first game warden in 1906, a year after it became a province. Through Mitchell’s decades as a game warden, he has seen many changes.

“As soon as we get a different political party in we have some different priorities, we changed the agencies probably 20 times in my 38 years… a lot of changes have happened over that amount of years.”

When he first started in 1981, the Alberta population was about half of what it is now but there were more conservation officers in the province, Mitchell said.

Conservation officers have three different priorities including resource law enforcement; problem wildlife, protect life and property; and public education and outreach, Mitchell said.

“A lot of people think all we do is go out and check little old guys fishing in the streams to see if they have a licence. It’s really more complicated than that,” said Mitchell who spent years as part of the major investigations and surveillance teams where officers dealt with and investigated high profile poachers in Alberta.

In one case, a group had shot and killed more than 100 moose and they were selling the meat to individuals and restaurants in northern Alberta. There was also a case in which five Mexican doctors came to Alberta to illegally hunt and kill five grizzly bears, he said.

“There’s a lot of commercial activity,” Mitchell said, pointing out that when each incident of illegal hunting or fishing is multiplied, there will be harm to resources.

Problem wildlife takes up about half the time of officers including bears in garbage, bear maulings, cougar fatalities and cougars killing llamas and sheep, and wolves.

With current staffing levels, most work is focused on matters involving public safety concerns or property damage such as animal deaths.

Public education and outreach is a big priority with officers having specialized equipment to use on search and rescue efforts, for example, he said.

Deterrence “is a big thing. There are so many hunters out there and so few game wardens so when somebody does do something that’s really blatant we try to get it out in the media,” he said.

Mitchell’s motto for his career is exemplified by words written by King George VI who said “the wildlife of today is not ours to dispose of as we please. We have it in Trust. We must account for it to those who come after,” he told the audience.

Every office he was stationed in had a plaque with those words hung in a prominent place for Mitchell to read every day.

“That was my goal when I went out on patrol for all those years is to protect the wildlife for the younger generations that come after us. As my dad had taught me about the love of wildlife, we wanted to make sure our kids and our grandkids could also enjoy the wildlife and the fisheries that come after,” Mitchell added.