A wildlife rescue in northern B.C. says provincial officials in the Prince George area are blocking it from rescuing orphaned animals.
Northern Lights Wildlife Society, a Smithers-based wildlife rehabilitation centre, has been operating for more than 30 years, caring for coyotes, bears, moose and more.
Executive director Angelika Langen said the organization has been effectively blocked from rescuing orphaned wildlife by provincial biologists managing the Omineca region which includes Prince George, Fort St. James, Mackenzie and Vanderhoof.
Langen said she was contacted by the Fish and Wildlife Section Head for the Omineca Region in May, and told Conservation Officers could no longer provide wildlife rescue approvals. Instead, all requests would have to be sent to the section head by email during business hours.
"We tried this throughout the summer with various fawns and moose calves and we always got 'no' as an answer, and now we're entering the fall season and bear cubs come up and we're getting a 'no' on the bear cubs as well," Langen said.
She said although rescue approvals are supposed to be determined on an individual basis, "no" has been the universal answer.
The Ministry of Water Lands and Resource Stewardship said there is no blanket prohibition on the rehabilitation and release of wildlife in the Prince George region and decisions on rehabilitation are made on a case-by-case basis, considering the best interests of the individual animal and the health of wildlife populations across the province.
The ministry says Northern Lights Wildlife Society holds a valid Wildlife Act permit, including for the Omineca area.
Langen said she was told they were not approved to rescue ungulates because of chronic wasting disease concerns.
"Chronic wasting disease is, in B.C., only in a very small part of the Kootenays and has been shown nowhere else," she said. "In our mind, therefore it is not a reason to exclude orphaned deer and moose from help.
"It was terrible to just stand by and watch them die."
Langen said the society has also been denied requests to rescue orphaned bear cubs in the Omineca region. She was told bear cubs at this time of year are able to survive on their own, especially if there's two of them.
But orphaned bear cubs are prone to getting into human attractants and can become nuisance bears that later have to be killed, according to Langen.
"They'll get into garbage and then come back next year when they are 150 pounds and they're not cute anymore and the neighbours don't want them," she said.
"We take them out of the populated area and we release them back into the wild where they should be and they have a fair chance."
She said the society works in all regions of the province, except the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island, but is only running into challenges in the Omineca region.
Langen wants to see a change in policy so decision-making doesn't vary so widely from region to region or from person to person.
"I think that there needs to be some sort of regulation that states that wildlife that is orphaned due to human causes has a right to be considered for rewilding and then set the parameters under what circumstances that can be," she said.
Without a wildlife rescue operating in the region, Langen worries well-meaning members of the public will try to rescue orphaned wildlife on their own, and the animals will become habituated to people.
"They'll take these animals in and not have the right resources to raise them correctly," she said. "When they get released they'll have to be dealt with by conservation officers."
Langen said the society has hired a lawyer and filed an appeal with the Environmental Appeal Board.
"I'm just at a loss and I feel I can't leave the animals without a voice at all."
