Editor:
Coyotes in Central Park. Rats everywhere. Burnaby needs to bring back park wardens with the ability to issue fines for people feeding the wildlife in Burnaby Central Park.
People feed the squirrels. The rats eat the free food when they find it. The coyotes, normally nocturnal hunters, come out all hours of the day for the free meal. Raccoons (with three-inch claws, and also can carry a disease deadly to humans for which there is no vaccine) help themselves during daylight hours to the feeding frenzy of human-offered fare.
People feed the ducks bread in spite of signs near the ponds and posted elsewhere.
Wake up, people. Signs are everywhere. DO NOT FEED THE WILDLIFE!
Rats will take free food. The rats eat anything squirrels will eat. The rats multiply, being happily fed, and go on to make more. So there’s more rats, which also raid the nests of the birds and mallards, hence endangering the life cycle and ecosystem of the estuary.
Bread for the ducks is poison for nesting season and a death sentence in the winter. The bread expands in the mallard’s stomach, making the mallard believe it is full, so the nesting mallard becomes malnourished. Malnourishment causes the calcium strength of the shell to become weak so that hatchlings do not happen. No hatchlings, hence a decrease in the mallard population, already battling an increasing population of predatory rats.
Raccoons are nocturnal, but again, thanks to the free food from the “adoring” but ignorant and disregarding public, raccoons are adjusting their hours because free food is everywhere!
Some eight years ago I watched a coyote stalk a family of four — mother, father with two little girls ages between three and five. The coyote was plodding bold as can be, at 3:30 p.m. in April, some 30 feet behind the unsuspecting family, in plain view along the horizontal path that runs adjacent to the SkyTrain inside the park. A general rule for coyotes is anything below a lone coyote’s shoulder is a potential meal, children included. Potential larger prey usually brings in a pack of coyotes to bring it down.
I played “crazy woman” chasing the coyote into the trees, but it only paused 20 feet away, stopped and watched me. I walked back to the family to give them an awareness of what was behind them.
I see so many people clueless with their “teacup” pets, using extendable leashes that are stretched as far as they can go, endangering possible cyclists and electric scooters using the paths but also the potential of lurking coyotes seeing an easy meal. Worse still, the small pets on no leash at all.
Remember, coyotes are not just hunters, but scavengers, getting free food from their adoring public. Why not snap up a bite on four legs wandering around like a meal for the taking?
With this in mind, the public needs to be reminded strongly that Burnaby Central Park, harbours an estuary under protection by various laws. It is home to nesting eagles (myself and another person witnessed an eagle scoop a mallard from the pond near the horseshoe pitch).
The park is also home to at least two set of returning owls. It also accommodates raccoons and skunks.
There are packs of coyotes that move through an access corridor to migrate from down near Marine Drive and hunt in Burnaby Central Park. This activity is increased when the pups are old enough and in training to hunt.
I urge the city to reinstate a park warden given the increased usage/visitation of the park by persons who think they are Doctor Dolittle and refuse to consider the long-term damage they propagate just to get a fuzzy warm feeling from paws, claws or saliva on their hands when the food is offered.
Wildlife is life that is wild. Do not feed it — respect it.
Angela Fengler
📢 SOUND OFF: Does Burnaby have a wildlife problem? What kind of behaviours do you see that endanger wildlife in the city? Would a park warden be a good idea? Share your thoughts — send us a letter.
