Mike Tyler and his family’s plans to paddle on the Lillooet River took a turn when an “unprecedented” volume of chicken remains floated down the river on the evening of Aug. 10.
“We pulled over on a sand bar to take in some sun,” Tyler wrote in a Facebook post. “As we were about to leave, there [were] some weird things floating in the water and a smell. Thought it was fish pieces at first. Then we realized it was not fish. It was chicken heads, feathers, and guts.”
Tyler's family came across the mass about two-and-a-half kilometres north of Pemberton's downtown core. He shared a Google Maps pin with the precise location on Facebook.
Initially, Tyler said he figured “some farmer butchered a dozen or two chickens” and decided to wait five minutes for the debris to pass.
“No big deal. We live in a farm community and I totally get the food chain,” he said.
But after “30 minutes of waiting for the chicken waste to go by so we could get in the water and launch our boards ... it kept going and going."
In an interview, Tyler estimated the volume couldn’t “have been less than a truckload. I mean, it was enough to make us smell it.”
He said the odour wasn’t overpowering, but it was enough to put his wife and daughter off.
“A couple of times, they’re like, ‘Oh my God,’ and they’re holding their noses. You could smell it and they were quite disgusted by it,” he recalled.
Tyler, who has lived in Pemberton for three decades, said he has “never seen anything like it.”
“I [wasn’t] even trying to point fingers. I’m just curious because, yeah, it seems extreme. What are they going to do, just start throwing pigs and cow carcasses and everything?”
A spokesperson for the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture and Food said such incidents should be reported to the Conservation Officer Service via the RAPP line (Report All Poachers and Polluters). Reports can be anonymously filed online or by calling the 24-hour hotline at 1-877-952-7277.
The spokesperson explained that filing the report will register the incident, and make sure the proper authorities are aware. Officials prioritize incidents with an “imminent risk to human health and the environment.”
“Once they submit the information, it will be up to the experts to determine next steps,” they said. “The role would be to investigate and take appropriate action if deemed necessary.”
Pique caught up with Tyler as he was driving up to the Yukon. He said he plans to file a report as soon as possible, after other Pemberton residents unanimously chimed about the strangeness of the incident.
“It would certainly be nice if that kind of thing doesn’t happen again,” he said.
