Don’t Open This Can of Worms: The Risks Behind Canned “Hunting” in Alberta

March 9, 2026

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• Caribou
• Uncategorized
• WLA Archive

By Pamela Narváez-Torres, AWA Conservation Specialist

Read the PDF version here.

 

I remember being in my early teenage years and first learning about the concept of canned hunting, the practice of killing big-game animals, usually bred in captivity, within fenced-in enclosures. The term sounded surreal to me at the time, almost cartoonishly cruel. Most of the examples I came across involved lions bred and raised in captivity in Africa, shot by paying clients for trophies and photographs. The idea disturbed me, but it also felt distant. Something that happened somewhere else.

I now know that canned hunting — or as the industry prefers to call it, harvest preserves — is not a distant practice, and if we don’t do something about it, it could soon be part of Alberta’s landscapes.

Potential changes to Alberta’s Livestock Industry Diversification Act

At the beginning of 2025, AWA received an invitation from the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation to participate in a webinar outlining proposed changes to Alberta’s Livestock Industry Diversification Act (LIDA). These changes would legalize Cervid Harvest Preserves (CHPs): fenced enclosures where farmed elk and deer (also known as cervids) could be sold as hunting experiences. LIDA currently prohibits the shooting of farmed game animals, but the new proposal would remove that restriction.

Then, on November 17, the Alberta government tabled Bill 10, its tenth “Red Tape Reduction” bill. The government frames these bills as efforts to make life easier for Albertans and businesses – but in reality, many of these so-called “burdens” slated for removal exist to protect the public interest, prevent environmental harm, and ensure that decisions are made responsibly. When those safeguards are removed, the beneficiaries tend to be industry, not the people or the environments we all rely on. Bill 10 – the Red Tape Reduction Statutes Amendment Act – proposes five legislative changes, one of which includes changes to LIDA to allow the CHPs.

This push did not originate within the Alberta government. Instead, it has been driven by the farmed cervid industry, particularly the Alberta Elk Commission, which has been lobbying the province to legalize CHPs for more than two decades. Every time they have lobbied for CHPs, they have been met with strong public opposition. Hunting and conservation organizations and the broader public have consistently viewed canned hunting as conflicting with the province’s hunting culture and wildlife ethics, which value fair-chase principles and animals living freely on the landscape.

Despite the lack of public support, the industry continues to point to harvest preserves operating in Saskatchewan, Québec, and 30 U.S. states to argue that Alberta’s farmed cervid industry is shrinking and needs new revenue streams to survive. Our province once had more than 600 game farms; today, just over 130 remain.

But contrary to the industry’s claims, this decline didn’t happen from “lost” economic opportunities; it follows a history of biological and regulatory consequences tied to farmed cervids.

AWA has been raising the alarm about those consequences for 20 years. In 2005, we reached out to the Minister of Sustainable Resource Development, warning that farmed cervids posed a serious and predictable threat to Alberta’s wildlife. We cautioned that ignoring decades of scientific warnings would lead to exactly what we are seeing today.

The connection: Chronic Wasting Disease

An important contributor to the decline of Alberta’s game farm industry has been Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), a sister disease to Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or “mad cow” disease (see the Quick Facts About CWD box for more details). It was first introduced to western Canada through the game-farming industry, then spread to wild cervid populations, and has been expanding ever since.

As CWD spread into wild populations, international markets responded, and different countries began imposing tighter restrictions on the importation of live cervids from CWD-positive regions. With the export market largely shut down at this point, the current proposal for CHPs is being framed as a way to keep the industry afloat. If they can’t ship elk and deer to CHPs abroad, then they want to bring the customers here. However, this raises a difficult and important question:

What happens when the “solution” for a struggling industry increases disease risk to Alberta’s wild cervids?

This is not just a policy question. It is an ecological and an ethical one.

CWD in Alberta: A growing threat to wildlife

The first positive cases of CWD in Alberta were detected in two elk farms back in 2002. By 2005, the disease was confirmed in wild mule deer near Acadia Valley (close to the Saskatchewan border) and has since become deeply embedded within Alberta’s wild mule deer and white-tailed deer populations, with elk and moose also affected at lower but still concerning levels.

Since 2005, there have been 6,635 cases of CWD detected in wild deer, elk, and moose in Alberta, with male mule deer the most affected.

Caribou, although not yet infected in Alberta, are known to be susceptible to CWD. Given how threatened our remaining populations already are due to habitat loss and industrial disturbance, the arrival of a fatal disease in caribou ranges would be devastating.

Once CWD prions contaminate soil, vegetation, or water, they can persist for years, even after the sick animals are gone. There is no cure, no vaccine, and no known way to remove the CWD prions from the environment.

Right now, Alberta’s main response to CWD is surveillance — hunters are asked to submit tissue samples for testing. This monitoring is essential and the data collected is very valuable, but there are limitations — surveillance only tells us where the disease is spreading. It does not prevent the disease from continuing to spread throughout our province.

Why CHPs increase risks to wild cervids

Legalizing CHPs would mean transporting and concentrating farmed elk and deer in fenced shooting enclosures, potentially into areas where CWD has not yet been detected. Animals can carry and shed CWD prions long before symptoms appear, and there is no reliable way to guarantee that animals moved for these operations are disease-free, as the only approved test is done after death.

A single transport event, a single infected animal, or a single contaminated feeding site could each introduce CWD into a region where it has previously not existed. That’s all it would take.

Our wild cervids’ future

For more than two decades, Albertans have been clear that canned hunting has no place in this province. Each time CHPs have been proposed, the public response has been the same: wildlife should remain wild.

Yet here we are again, revisiting a policy that prioritizes the survival of a private industry over the health of Alberta’s landscapes and wild species. We do not need to accelerate CWD spread. We do not need to fence farmed game animals for shooting. We do have a choice.

AWA supports economies built around living wildlife, on the land, in functioning ecosystems, and we are firmly opposed to the shooting of farmed game animals, a position widely shared amongst Alberta’s hunting and conservation communities.

At its core, this is a question about who we are and the future we want. Will Alberta be a province where wildlife remains wild, where elk and deer move freely over the landscape? Or will we become a province where these animals are increasingly fenced, traded, and sold — their lives shaped by markets rather than landscapes?

What do we stand to lose if we get this wrong?

As Alberta considers changes to the act governing farmed cervids, we stand at a crossroads. CWD has shown us that once a disease like this crosses the boundary between captivity and the wild, there is no going back. Protecting our wild cervids means protecting the landscapes, traditions, and ecological integrity that are left in the province. Not everything needs to be commercialized; some things, like the freedom and health of elk and caribou, are worth far more when left untouched.

By the time this article is printed, Bill 10 may have passed, and CHPs could be one step closer to becoming a reality in Alberta. If that happens, AWA will continue fighting to hold the government accountable and to ensure that public, ecological, and ethical concerns are not ignored.

And if Bill 10 does not pass? Then we know from experience that this proposal will likely resurface – as it has, repeatedly, for over two decades. Either way, AWA will remain vigilant, and we will continue advocating for policies that put wildlife, ecosystems, and the public interest ahead of short-term gain for a select few.

 

Quick Facts about CWD

What is CWD?

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a fatal, infectious, de-generative disease that attacks the brain and nervous system of species in the deer family (cervids). CWD be-longs to a family of diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, all of which are caused by misfolded proteins called prions. These prions grad-ually create tiny holes in the brain, giving it a sponge-like appearance, which leads to dramatic weight loss, abnormal behaviour, loss of coordination, and eventu-ally death. Similar prion diseases include mad cow dis-ease in cattle, scrapie in sheep and goats, and Creutz-feldt-Jakob disease in humans.

How is it transmitted?

CWD can spread from animal to animal, or through the environment. Infected animals shed prions in their bodily fluids including saliva, urine, feces, and even ant-ler velvet. Those prions remain infectious in soil and plants for years, creating long-lasting hotspots that wildlife may continue to encounter long after the sick animals are gone.

Can humans get CWD?

At this time, there is no direct evidence that CWD is transmissible to humans. However, some research in-volving non-human primates (monkeys) suggests it could be possible. Public health agencies in Canada and Alberta recommend not ingesting CWD-positive meat.

How is CWD detected?

There is currently no simple test for live animals. CWD detection happens after death, through testing of brain or lymph node tissue of harvested or found-dead animals.

Is there a treatment for CWD?

Currently, there are no treatments or vaccines for this disease. Once prions infect an animal, the disease is always fatal.