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A Bathurst man is urging New Brunswickers to keep an eye out for wildlife on provincial highways, even where wildlife fencing is installed<\/p>\n
In late November, Bob Comeau and his son were driving on Route 8 between Bathurst and Miramichi when they struck a deer near Bartibog.<\/p>\n
Comeau said the collision happened on a stretch of highway with wildlife fencing, but there was an opening in the fence because of wildfires in the area over the summer, and it was never fixed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were two gentlemen that have a camp in that area [who] said they reported this a couple of times before,\u201d said Comeau.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAlso while we’re there, another deer come out and almost got struck behind us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Growing problem<\/p>\n
Problems with wildlife fencing were brought up in a report earlier this month by Auditor General Paul Martin.<\/p>\n
According to the report, repairs on highways maintained by the province should be done \u201cas soon as possible,\u201d and within 20 days on highways maintained by public-private partnerships.<\/p>\n
Of the 29 needed fence repairs, only five were ever done, and none were done within 20 days.<\/p>\n
That wasn\u2019t the first time in recent weeks that problems with highway fencing have caused trouble for motorists.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, a woman was seriously injured when the car she was in collided with a moose on Route 7 to Saint John.<\/p>\n
Chuck Chiasson, the minister of transportation and infrastructure, said that in the Route 7 case, the problem was a section of wildlife fencing that was damaged in a previous accident.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don’t fix that in house,\u201d Chiasson said. \u201cWe have to get a contractor out to fix that fence and it was scheduled to be fixed the following week.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for Comeau\u2019s crash, Chiasson said it was the first time he\u2019d heard about damage to that section of fencing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI find it concerning,” he said. “And it’s certainly something that I’m going to look into to find out [what] reason that fence has not been put back up.”<\/p>\n
Costly crash<\/p>\n
Luckily for Comeau, the repercussions of the crash were more financial than physical.<\/p>\n
He and his son were not injured, but the front end of their car was.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the front end of the car is damaged \u2014 fenders, hood, grill, headlights,\u201d Comeau said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s $18,000 in the repair shop right now. \u2026 I’m hoping to get it back before Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Comeau thinks the province should do regular inspections of the wildlife fencing on New Brunswick highways to make sure it is in good shape.<\/p>\n
But he also thinks drivers should keep a sharp eye on the road.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe main thing is do not let your guard down in any of the fenced areas and keep your eyes open,\u201d Comeau said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-364301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}