A Greeny Lake trapper is warning pet owners to keep their furry friends close to home this winter as wolf and cougar populations rise.
Paul Blackwell will be speaking at the Greeny Lake Volunteer Fire Department Society’s annual general meeting on Saturday, Nov. 16, which he expects will attract community members from as far as Rail Lake.
At the meeting, Blackwell plans to talk about how cats and dogs wandering outside at night or far from home can become targets to the growing cougar and wolf populations.
“These folks don’t realize wolves will instantly kill dogs,” Blackwell said. He also said a large cougar has been spotted hunting deer along properties in Timothy Lake.
Blackwell has been a trapper for 40 years and said pets wandering off their properties also risk getting caught in traps intended for specific fur-bearing animals regulated by the provincial government. He's already had an incident where a dog got caught in a snare five kilometres from its home.
“It’s unfortunate because some of them aren’t going to make it home,” he said, explaining how modern trapping requires humane traps which are intended to kill instantly.
Blackwell, whose trapline is one of the biggest in the South Cariboo, said he doesn’t put traps within two to three kilometres of a property. He is posting signs so people know not to let their pets wander near the area, and is trying to spread the word by telling everyone he sees to keep their pets close to home.
He has also noticed dogs getting close to vehicle tires and said as logging activities grow dogs risk getting hurt from logging trucks.
As a longtime trapper, Blackwell knows a good deal about animal habitat and behaviours and tries to inform people and speak up when he sees problems in the environment. Last year, he was warning against burning slash piles as bears and other animals use them as dens and risk being burned alive. This year, Blackwell was happy to say the bear population was much larger than he’d ever seen.
