In January, Craig Comstock did what he’s
done many times over the years — loaded his two dogs into his vehicle
and drove from his home in Calgary to the backcountry for a day hike.
Comstock, 44, is an avid outdoorsman — he
hikes, fishes and hunts pheasants and partridges — but none of that
prepared him for what he found in the bush.
First, he came across two dead foxes and a dead wolf.
“Their heads had been cut off, their feet
had been cut off and they had been skinned,” he told The Narwhal, noting
that he also saw “several piles of bait meat.”
Then, as he walked on, he felt the prickly
sensation of being watched. His eyes met those of a wolf, just 10
metres away. It was huge, he said — much, much bigger than his own dogs.
He froze.
Then he noticed that the wolf was trapped in a wire snare. Comstack and the wolf stared at each other.
“I wish there was something I can do to help,” Comstack remembers thinking.
“I can’t cut you loose, buddy,” he thought.
The wolf lay back down in the snow.
Comstock would find six other dead wolves caught on the same trapline.
When John Marriott, a local wildlife
photographer and conservationist in Canmore, Alta., first heard word
about the live wolf found in a snare, he set out to check the traplines
himself.
What he found, he says, was a “scene of
carnage.” He told The Narwhal he found three dead wolves, nine dead
coyotes and four dead foxes — all of which had been skinned.
All, he says, were “just laying there with the meat in various stages of decomposition.”...https://thenarwhal.ca/two-banff-national-park-wolf-packs-likely-decimated-by-trapping/
