As of May 2019, the Saskatchewan Government made changes to the trespassing laws requiring anyone who wants to go onto private land for hunting and/or any other recreational use to obtain permission from the landowner prior to entry.
With millions of acres of rural land in Saskatchewan, it can be daunting to find the owner of a particular section of land, however, there is a company in Saskatchewan is looking to change all of that.
SaskLander, a Saskatchewan based company working with SARM, is in the process of developing an app that will bring landowners and land users together in one platform. The concept is simple, if you own land you can set restrictions, permissions, etc. and that information will be posted on an interactive map so anyone looking to use the land will have all the information readily available making for ease of contacting the owner to gain the required permission.
Aldo Scribante, from SaskLander, states that they want to accommodate all types of recreational land use, and to give the landowners as much freedom as possible for what activities they want to allow and when they want to allow it. The land will be color-coded; there will be a distinction between private and crown land and availability of parcels. Once a request has been processed, a digital certificate through the app will count as written permission to be on the property for the scheduled time and date.
Scribante noted that so far all of the owners they have talked to about the project have responded with interest and are happy to offer their advice to help build a service that meets their needs. Owners have been looking for a better way to manage property access other than posting signs and this will be a way for notice to be clearly available for both landowners and land users.
Currently, the service is still in the development stage and the plans are to have a full beta version running next year so that live testing may begin for the 2020 hunting season.
The service will be available as both an app and a website based service so that anyone with an internet connection can have access any time of day and Scribante stated there will be no fee for owners to register their land on the system. Land users will be charged a small fee to facilitate communication between themselves and the owner, however, the cost will be less than the cost of purchasing an RM map, driving from one parcel of land to another to find the owner and requesting permission. The fee will only be charged if a request for permission is made to an owner so browsing and other information will be made available for free.
This service will hopefully bring smoother transactions between owners and potential users and simplify the search for land available for hunting, snowmobiling and any other recreational activities.
For more information, visit their website at www.sasklander.ca
Written by: Bobbi - Lynne McGarry
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