The Editor,
We walk our dog at the power line and field behind Citadel middle and Hazel Trembath elementary school in Port Coquitlam. In the past couple of weeks, someone has been leaving meat - pork chops and a whole, cooked chicken so far - in the area. This morning, my wife had to take a chicken leg from our dog, which, luckily, was on a leash. The dog retrieved it from the brush at the gate between the two schools' playgrounds.
Whoever is doing this, I think, does not have evil intent or a dog would have been poisoned by now. It looks as if someone has decided to feed the coyotes, perhaps in a misguided attempt to save cats from being eaten. (An aside: If cat owners were responsible, they would keep Fluffy indoors, at all times, and we wouldn't see any more "missing cat" posters.)
Leaving cooked meat around is a grossly irresponsible thing to do. Rats, coyotes, cougars and bears are attracted to it. This year has seen many sightings of coyotes and bears in this area, and leaving food around for them will only make it worse.
Bears, especially, become habituated to easy food access, resulting in conflicts with humans and dogs.
An increase in the coyote population can be expected any time there is lots of protein-rich food. Rats are a worsening problem in PoCo and feeding them will increase their numbers very quickly.
I don't know what can be done about this - how do you stop someone tossing pork chops into the woods? - except by municipal government and the local papers educating people to the overwhelmingly negative outcomes resulting from this irresponsible behaviour.
Barrie Abbott
Port Coquitlam
