{"id":490325,"date":"2026-02-21T17:07:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T17:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/490325\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T17:07:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T17:07:07","slug":"anniversary-of-wildlife-officers-death-a-sobering-reminder-of-ice-dangers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/490325\/","title":{"rendered":"Anniversary of Wildlife Officer\u2019s Death a Sobering Reminder of Ice Dangers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t&#13;<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/officer-howard-lavers.jpg\" class=\"header-image\" alt=\"Anniversary of Wildlife Officer's Death a Sobering Reminder of Ice Dangers\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Officer Howard Lavers.<\/p>\n<p>Today marks a sad anniversary in the province\u2019s wildlife conservation community.<\/p>\n<p>It was 13 years ago today that long-time wildlife\u00a0officer Howard Lavers lost his life\u00a0after his snowmobile went through the ice on the west coast while he was on duty.<\/p>\n<p>Lavers, an experienced snowmobiler who was intimately familiar with the back country, passed away despite the\u00a0efforts of his colleagues.<\/p>\n<p>Conservation officers lobbied for and eventually got personal protective equipment as part of their regular kit as a result of the tragedy.<\/p>\n<p>Chris Wessel was one of two officers who helped RCMP recover Lavers\u2019 body from the water.\u00a0 He says it\u2019s something he\u2019ll never forget, and he\u00a0wants it to serve as a powerful reminder about\u00a0ice safety.<\/p>\n<p>Wessel says ice and winter weather is unpredictable and nothing can be taken for granted.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wish I could share the feeling I still have to this day, when I see or travel over ice, because you would never make that mistake again. You would be vigilant, and you would be checking and being safe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; Officer Howard Lavers. Today marks a sad anniversary in the province\u2019s wildlife conservation community. It was 13&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-490325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490325","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=490325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}