Canada stops using 'avalanche dogs' for rescues in Rocky Mountains, stirring outrage
A 55-year-old dog rescue programme that has found missing hikers and children in the Canadian wilderness was axed as part of government budget cuts.
Canada ends use of 'avalanche dogs' in Rocky Mountain rescues, prompting anger
Scott Ward still remembers the relief on parents’ faces when a search-and-rescue dog he was working with located their children unharmed in Canada’s sprawling, heavily forested Banff National Park.
On another occasion, his canine partner guided him on a two-hour hike up a steep mountainside until they reached a man with a broken leg who was near death from hypothermia.
Now 73 and retired, Ward spent 17 years working as a dog handler in the wilderness of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, a job he said was deeply rewarding.
Over time, the rescue program was reduced to just one person in the role, and Ward said he was stunned when he recently learned that Parks Canada would shut it down entirely this month.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is carrying out wide-ranging funding cuts to Canada’s public service, and Parks Canada said last week that hundreds of employees will soon be laid off.
The agency confirmed the decision to the BBC, describing it as a “difficult decision” to eliminate its only dog handler position in Banff National Park, one of Canada’s most rugged regions and a place that draws more than four million visitors a year from around the world.
It said the move is part of efforts to modernise its law enforcement branch, and that “search and rescue operations will continue to be delivered” through other means.
The elimination of this single role has sparked public anger, with more than 5,000 people signing a petition since Tuesday calling for it to be restored.
William Stevenson, the Conservative Member of Parliament for the Banff area who launched the petition, said he supports tighter government spending, but believes this cut could endanger public safety.
“How could they possibly make such a bad choice in where to cut?” he told the BBC.
The canine search and rescue programme has been part of Parks Canada for 55 years
For 55 years, the government used rescue dogs in the Canadian Rocky Mountains that were trained to track “everything,” Ward said, from a small paper clip to shell casings to a human body.
After avalanches, a frequent winter danger in the area, they were deployed to look for hikers or skiers trapped beneath heavy snow.
“It saves probers hours and hours of standing shoulder to shoulder and poking in the snow, and also exposing themselves to secondary avalanche hazards,” Ward said.
In summer, they helped locate children who had become lost, often after wandering away from their parents’ campsites.
“We lost a huge public safety and staff safety resource,” he said.
The last dog in Parks Canada’s programme, a German Shephard named Leroy, was retired in August.
During his seven years on the job, Leroy helped track 156 people, find 57 who were lost in the wilderness, and solve two murders in Banff.
A new dog had already been trained and was ready for duty before Parks Canada announced last week that the programme would be scrapped as part of recent C$145m ($104m; £78m) budget cuts to Parks Canada, local newspaper Rocky Mountain Outlook reported.
Along with his petition, Stevenson also brought up the issue in Canada’s parliament during a late sitting on Thursday.
In reply, Ryan Turnball, a Liberal MP and the parliamentary secretary for finance, said the government is concentrating on reducing Canada’s deficit and “ensuring public funds support growth, resilience and the well-being of Canadians”.
Stevenson said he will keep pressing the matter and has requested a face-to-face meeting with Parks Canada’s CEO.
As for Ward, he hopes the programme will be brought back soon.
He recalled a saying often repeated by an old park warden who trained him: “You can make an armpit smell like a lilac bush and you can put a man on the moon, but nothing can replace the nose of the avalanche dog.”