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Owner of dead dog finds comfort in court
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
A rural Prince George woman has been able to overcome the lack of a dangerous dog bylaw in the Fraser-Fort George Regional District and rein in the owners of a dangerous dog.
It took plenty of work to gather the evidence necessary to take the case to court and it occurred only after the dog had killed her Shih Tzu, but the woman, who lives east of the city and asked that her name not be printed, was able to realize a measure of justice for her loss.
“My neighbours found out through the courts that it is pos-
sible for others to seek justice and even financial responsibility for the acts caused by their dangerous dog, even if you live outside city limits,” she said.
It all began four or five years ago when the neighbour moved into the unfenced property next door with three large dogs that ran like a pack and killed cats for fun on other people’s property.
On one occasion, her then 14-year-old daughter saw the three rip a cat apart in her yard. The owners finally got rid of the three dogs “only to replace them with one very vicious pit bull.”
The dog was allowed to roam wherever it wanted to and did not back down, even if someone tried to scare it away with a broom or
shovel.
“This dog would go on to circle my daughter’s vehicle so she would have to wait in her car until the dog went away or they [the owners] called it home,” the woman said.
Her two Shih Tzus, Peanut and Snoopy, used the cat door to go out and do their business. But one day, the pit bull attacked Snoopy, grabbing his back end, leaving large fang holes in both rear thighs and across his lower spine.
“Luckily, we were home and ran onto our deck, startling the pit bull, and he dropped Snoopy before the death shake that was certain to happen,” she said.
— see ‘THE NEIGHBOURS, page 4
Home sales reach near record pace
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
Prince George went through its second-busiest year on record in terms of single-family home
sales, according to numbers released Wednesday by the B.C. Northern Real Estate Board.
By the end of 2014, 950 such homes were sold for an average $271,580 each, working out to
$258 million of activity. That’s just behind the $260.2 million reached in 2007, when 1,083 homes went for an average of $240,245.
— see ‘CONTINUED, page 5
Minding
moose
Samantha WRIGHT ALLEN
Citizen staff sallen@pgcitizen.ca
Northern B.C. is in the middle of its peak time for moose-vehicle collisions.
That makes it prime time for UNBC researcher Roy Rea’s talk Friday on the matter.
“Most collisions happen at night, so when there is less visibility. It’s harder for drivers to see and animals tend to be more active.
“You’ve got this black road and there’s a black background and you’ve got this big, dark brown moose that jumps up on the road and it’s hard to see until you’re right on top of it,” says Rea, adding much of the talk will focus on his current research looking into worldwide accident trends and answering why the time of year for moose collisions shifts from region to region.
While time of day is a constant factor, the seasonal spikes vary and Rea aims to answer why.
In the prairies and eastern United States, the peak is in the mid-summer and Europe, Rea says, is a “mixed bag.” In B.C. and Alaska, the peak is in the winter - December and January - with another uptick in June and July to coincide with the movement of pregnant cows.
In mountainous regions, like northern B.C., Rea says his working theory is that elevational migration comes in to play.
“Moose move up to high elevations in the summer time, so that they’re away from the roads,” he says, but come winter, moose move to lower ground out of deep snowpack.
“We tend to build our roads along river bottoms and valley bottoms,” says Rea, where moose feed on willows and dogwoods. “It just happens that the roads are bisecting those habitats.”
According to the Wildlife Collision Prevention Program, moose represent seven per cent of all wildlife collisions in B.C.,
and often lead to human death given their massive size. An adult male moose can weigh up to 500 kilograms.
Rea, a senior laboratory instructor at UNBC, previously used data from 2000 to 2005 to determine collision hotspots in northern B.C.
Though his study was just published this summer, Rea has been working with the Ministry of Transportation for years to apply his recommendations, like removing outdated road signs and making sure the bright yellow road signs are in the right spots.
Rea found a correlation of collisions and the accumulation of salt on the sides of the road, an attractive draw for wildlife.
“In areas where we’ve covered the licks with rocks, or we’ve put a fence around a lick, or with pine beetle trees, the animals decrease their visitations to those areas,”
“It’s working,” says Rea of the strategy, which also includes taking care to cut roadside shrubbery during specific seasons. “If you cut plants at one time of the year, it produces really yummy succulent brows.”
Some places - not Prince George - have employed more creative, albeit expensive, options: sprinkling cayenne pepper in the road salt.
Though the ministry updates its moose-collision “hot-spots” every five years, the most recent publicly available reported 410 accidents in 2007.
That only covers a fraction of the problem; the ministry estimates that reported numbers represent a mere 25 to 30 per cent of the actual number of wildlife collisions.
That’s because workers only count the animals found on the asphalt, says Rea, adding predators are quick to smell carcasses and drag them from the accident site.
“If [it] goes in the ditch, if it drops off the side of cliff or into a lake, or if the animals gets hit and then wanders off into the woods, it’s never recorded.”
Rea’s talk is Friday at 3:30 p.m. at UNBC’s Weldwood Theatre.
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