B.C. native council offers $25,000 reward for elk poachers

The Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council has announced a $25,000 reward for information resulting in the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for recent elk kills in the Barkley Sound and Alberni Inlet areas.

The reward was announced at a press conference in Port Alberni Tuesday.

NTC president Debra Foxcroft said the reward was one of the largest offered in Canada and one of the largest from a Canadian First Nation.

First Nations leaders at the press conference said they were responding to recent incidents of elk being killed and left to rot where they fell.

"We are mystified why it is happening," Chief Jeff Cook of the Huu-ay-aht Nation said at the press conference, adding that there have been eight or ten elk slaughtered in the last few months.

Licensed hunters can kill one elk in a season in some regions of the province. Over the past 10 years, B.C. hunters killed an average of 124 Roosevelt Elk deer a year, according to a B.C. Hunting Regulations Synopsis.