Carcross/Tagish First Nation’s acting senior director of operations says employees have been given training after chicken meat was improperly disposed of in the bush after the Easter long weekend.
At least two posts began circulating on Facebook last week that appeared to show a large amount of meat on the ground in a semi-wooded area.
In an interview April 17, James Smith confirmed that a C/TFN employee had improperly disposed of 12 chickens in the bush following the Easter long weekend, with the intention of leaving them for animals to eat.
The chickens had been cooked before the weekend, he said, and when staff returned to work on Tuesday, the meat had gone bad.
“…The person who decided to dispose of them didn’t do so in a very good manner, I guess, so we worked to rectify the situation as quickly as we could, and it’s all taken care of,” Smith said.
Smith would not identify the position the person held, saying it was an internal human resources matter.
The meat was dumped near the highway south of Carcross. Smith said the First Nation found out about the situation “basically because of the chatter that happened of Facebook.” He said he didn’t know when the clean-up happened because he wasn’t directly involved with it, but that the First Nation took action once it found out what had happened.
C/TFN employees have “absolutely” since received training and education on the proper disposal of meat, according to Smith. He added that he hadn’t heard of something like this happening before.
In an email, Environment Yukon spokesperson Heather Avery wrote that conservation officers received reports about “chickens dumped into the bush near Carcross” on April 16.
“After a thorough search of the area they found no evidence of the chickens and no further action will be undertaken,” she wrote.
“…We would like to remind the public that bears are waking up across the territory. All attractants should be properly disposed of or properly contained to keep bears from becoming food habituated.”
Contact Jackie Hong at jackie.hong@yukon-news.com