As spring kicks off in 2019, the Ministry of Environment will no longer be offering walk-in services to the public in 19 field offices.

Offices in Assiniboia, Big River, Buffalo Narrows, Estevan, Humboldt, Île-à-la-Crosse, Kindersley, Leader, Lloydminster, Maple Creek, Moose Jaw, Outlook, Pinehouse, Preeceville, Shaunavon, Southend, Spiritwood, Wadena, and Weyburn will no longer offer front counter services.

Kevin Murphy, assistant deputy minister of resource management and compliance division of the Ministry of Environment, said that they're closing down the offices because they weren't being used enough.

"We looked at our customer service and services that our clients were using from our front counters and found that we had a very low utilization rate in a number of our offices, many of which were only open a few days a week," he said. "In looking in the license, in particular, those offices less than two of our hunting and angling licenses were being sold from these 19 offices. So in order to better deliver service to our clients and looking at the kinds of services, they're requesting we decided that it was best to make this shift."

Offices will be discontinuing the front counter service on different dates with the office in Preeceville doing in on April 2, Big Rivers and Île-à-la-Crosse on August 30, Southend on October 1 with the rest including those in the southwest estimated to discontinue the front counter service on May 14.

The change will affect 16 part-time staff and three full-time staff and will see the Ministry save about $600,000 in the next fiscal year.

Front counter service will still be available in 13 offices after October 1 including Beauval, Creighton, Hudson Bay, La Ronge, Meadow Lake, Melfort, Nipawin, North Battleford, Prince Albert, Regina, Saskatoon, Swift Current, and Yorkton.

Murphy said that they looked at the amount of traffic that offices were generating to decide which offices to keep open and which to close.

"In general we looked at either the number of days of the week, so less than five days a week or the amount of traffic that we had and we're regionalizing back to front counter service where we are able to deploy our front counter service five days a week for our clients."

Murphy said the former clients of the closed offices will still have a variety of options with the front counter service being gone.

"We found that the majority of our clients were actually using the local vendor network," he said. "Everything from gas stations through to Canadian Tire and Cabela's. That's the majority of our license sales. The next level of utilization right now is online services. Online services and phone are still available as well as the front counter at our regional offices. For those direct contact things like dropping off samples we are looking at partnering with both commercial and other government agencies to ensure that the service level is maintained."

Conservation officers at the affected locations aren't expected to experience any changes.