Evolving Wildlife Damage Claims to Meet Today's Farming Realities

By combining advanced imaging technology with personalized service, we are improving accuracy while reducing the amount of time you need to spend away from your operation. Our goal is to ensure wildlife damage assessments remain relevant, efficient and practical for Saskatchewan producers.

SCIC is leveraging drone and AI technology to enhance how we complete our existing wildlife damage claim process. If you notice wildlife damage in a standing crop, register your claim at least seven days prior to swathing or straight cutting. When registering your claim, identify the impacted legal land descriptions. Reporting damage before swathing or straight cutting and allowing inspections to be completed in standing crops helps to accurately identify all wildlife damage, which may not be as apparent later. From there, we complete the inspection. Assessing wildlife damage claims with drones no longer requires your presence on-site during the inspection or the need for you to identify damaged areas within the fields.

During the inspection, SCIC adjusters fly drones over your impacted fields and capture hundreds of high-resolution images. The images are combined to create a complete aerial view of your land. This allows us to clearly identify damaged areas and wildlife activity patterns. Using artificial intelligence, we analyze imagery to identify wildlife trails and beds and determine the total number of damaged acres. This approach supports consistent, evidence-based assessments across claims by applying the same methodology to every inspection. Human expertise remains an important part of the process, with staff reviewing and verifying every image as part of our quality assurance process.

Trails and beds are clearly displayed on your final claim maps. While wildlife trails are consistently narrower than 1.35 feet, this standardized width is applied in all claim calculations. This captures both trail formation and associated grazing activity along the entire length of each trail and ensures a consistent approach across claims.

Even though modern harvest equipment picks up crop production from the trails and beds, the measured acres are assumed to be a 100 per cent loss, with no salvageable production. This accounts for factors such as wildlife grazing and potential shelling or shattering that can occur along affected areas. All Saskatchewan producers who report farm income and expenses may be eligible for up to 100 per cent compensation for big game and waterfowl damage to crops. For 2026, compensation is available for damage claims valued at $500 and over. Claims are based on the total number of damaged acres and the associated yield loss.

For 2026, we are committed to providing you with information sooner in our claims process, keeping you informed before and after your inspection. Timely access to damage maps helps you understand wildlife activity on your land and how your claim is assessed. These maps provide a clear visual representation of where damage occurred. In response to ongoing producer feedback, we are adjusting our timelines to share maps closer to the inspection date. These improvements are guided by practical experience and a clear focus on delivering exceptional service to you.

For insured crops, yields are based on your Production Declaration. For uninsured crops, yields are determined using the annual average yield of insured acres in your area. Once harvest is complete and yields are finalized, SCIC calculates your claim and issues an initial payment based on confirmed acres, yields and initial prices. Final wildlife prices are set later in the spring. At that point, the remaining portion is provided as the final payment. We are available to review your map, answer questions and support you with your claim.

Your feedback, along with insight from industry groups, continues to guide improvements to the wildlife damage claims process.

By strengthening our processes and investing in innovation, we are making wildlife damage assessments more consistent, transparent and efficient for Saskatchewan producers. A consistent focus on Saskatchewan farmers' realities helps ensure the Program remains relevant, responsive and trusted.