Animal advocacy group offers $1,000 reward after raccoon chewed its paw to escape leg trap

Warning: disturbing imagery and details.

An animal advocacy group is offering a $1,000 reward for information that will lead to finding the person responsible for setting a leg-trap that left a raccoon “mangled” in Abbotsford last month.

Fur-Bearers executive director Lesley Fox said the raccoon was found caught in the leg-trap hanging from a tree in the Mount Lehman area.

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She said the animal repeatedly chewed its paw to escape, leaving wounds so extensive that the animal couldn’t be rehabilitated and had to be put down.

Fox said the group believes the trap was set illegally because trapping season doesn’t start until the middle of October.

“Whether they’re legal or not it’s problematic that these devices are still being used first and foremost and that they’re being used in our communities, and with all the other pressures that wildlife are currently experiencing, whether it’s climate change, forest fires, drought, urban sprawl — trapping is animal cruelty that we can stop,” she said.

READ MORE:  Raccoon chews off its own paw after it was found ‘crushed’ by trap set in Burnaby neighbourhood

If you have any information, you’re asked to contact the Fur-Bearers, BC SPCA or the province’s Report All Poachers and Polluters line.

Global News has reached out to the province and City of Abbotsford for comment.