Prince George rescuers use naloxone on crows with suspected opioid poisoning, highlighting new wildlife risks from B.C.'s toxic drug supply.
PRINCE GEORGE, CANADA — Wildlife rescuers say more than a dozen crows showed signs of suspected toxic-drug exposure this year, with naloxone helping many stricken birds safely recover across the city.
Wildlife rescuers in northern British Columbia are confronting an unusual consequence of Canada's toxic-drug crisis: crows found unresponsive in downtown Prince George with symptoms that veterinarians say are consistent with drug poisoning.
Good Caws Crow Rescue Society, a provincially licensed non-profit bird rescue based in Prince George, says it has encountered more than a dozen suspected cases this year, a substantial increase from the one or two such incidents it previously saw in a typical year.
Volunteers have responded by carrying nasal naloxone, the medication widely used to reverse opioid overdoses. Videos shared by the organisation show severely impaired birds being treated and later becoming alert enough to fly.
The cases provide a striking example of how hazardous substances discarded in an urban environment can extend risks beyond the people who use them. They also raise questions about waste management, wildlife protection and the broader effects of British Columbia's long-running toxic-drug emergency.
Rescuers report an unusual cluster in downtown Prince George
Dayna Slater, founder of Good Caws Crow Rescue Society, has described affected birds as lying with their wings spread, eyes closed and heart rates dramatically slowed. Some have remained alive but almost completely unresponsive, while rescuers have also observed brown liquid around the beaks of some birds.
Not every crow has survived. Slater says, however, that most of the birds taken into care have recovered sufficiently to be released within about 24 hours.
Dr. Kaitlyn Liukaitis of Birchwood Veterinary Clinic, who has treated some of the affected birds, told CBC that their symptoms are consistent with toxic-drug exposure. The apparent response to naloxone also supports concern about opioid involvement, although the available reporting does not establish laboratory confirmation of the substance consumed by each bird.
That distinction matters. The incidents are best described as suspected toxic-drug or opioid poisonings rather than confirmed overdoses unless toxicological testing identifies the substances involved.
Good Caws believes the birds are encountering small amounts of drugs or contaminated material while scavenging through exposed rubbish. Crows are opportunistic feeders and cannot distinguish harmless food packaging from a discarded bag or other material containing a dangerous residue.
Because birds have much smaller body masses than humans, an amount that appears insignificant to a person may represent a serious exposure to an animal.
Naloxone has become part of an unlikely wildlife rescue kit
Naloxone works by blocking opioid receptors and can rapidly reverse potentially fatal opioid effects. Its best-known role is in human emergency medicine and community overdose response, but veterinarians can also use opioid antagonists when treating animals.
In Prince George, that has produced the extraordinary sight of wildlife volunteers carrying a medication usually associated with the human overdose crisis.
Good Caws says harm-reduction workers have helped identify distressed birds and supplied expired naloxone kits for wildlife-response purposes. The rescue organisation has shared examples in which apparently incapacitated crows became responsive following treatment.
The organisation does not believe people are deliberately poisoning the animals. Instead, Slater has described the incidents as a consequence of crows sharing the same urban environment as people and searching through accessible waste.
One practical intervention proposed by the rescue group is straightforward: more secure, covered rubbish containers in affected areas. Preventing birds from reaching contaminated discarded material could reduce exposure without depending on rescuers finding an animal quickly enough to treat it.
The issue therefore sits at the intersection of public health and urban wildlife management. Waste containing toxic substances can create hazards for animals just as discarded medications, chemicals and other contaminants can.
British Columbia's decriminalisation policy was provincial, not a Prince George law
The incidents have also become entangled in the political debate surrounding British Columbia's experiment with drug decriminalisation. The policy history is more complicated than descriptions suggesting that Prince George itself simply “legalised drugs.”
Prince George did not independently legalise illicit drugs. The policy was a province-wide federal exemption requested by British Columbia.
Beginning on January 31, 2023, adults aged 18 and over in British Columbia were exempted from criminal penalties for possessing a combined total of up to 2.5 grams of certain opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA for personal use. Production, trafficking and possession above the threshold remained illegal.
The exemption was intended as a three-year pilot designed to reduce the stigma and fear of prosecution that public-health officials said could discourage people who use drugs from seeking assistance.
The rules changed substantially before the pilot ended.
After concerns about public drug use and disorder, British Columbia asked the federal government in 2024 to narrow the exemption. From May 7, 2024, possession under the exemption was restricted largely to private residences, places where unhoused people were legally sheltering and designated health-care locations such as overdose-prevention, drug-checking and supervised-consumption sites.
Possession of the covered drugs in ordinary public places such as parks, businesses, hospitals and public transit was therefore no longer protected by the exemption.
The pilot ultimately expired on January 31, 2026. British Columbia did not seek its renewal.
Those dates are important when assessing the current crow incidents. The reported cluster occurred in 2026, after the exemption had expired, and the available evidence does not establish that decriminalisation caused the birds' suspected poisonings.
Prince George has faced an exceptionally severe toxic-drug burden
Although a direct causal connection between the former decriminalisation policy and the crow cases has not been demonstrated, the underlying toxic-drug crisis in Prince George is well documented.
BC Coroners Service data for 2024 placed the Prince George Local Health Area among the five highest in the province for unregulated drug-toxicity mortality, with a preliminary rate of 103 deaths per 100,000 people.
Across British Columbia, 2,253 unregulated drug-toxicity deaths were reported for 2024 in figures released the following February. Fentanyl and its analogues were detected in 78 per cent of expedited toxicology testing that year.
The provincial picture improved in 2025 but remained severe. Preliminary BC Coroners Service figures released in February 2026 recorded 1,826 unregulated drug-toxicity deaths during 2025, approximately 21 per cent fewer than the updated 2024 total.
Fentanyl and its analogues remained the substances most frequently identified in expedited testing. Northern Health, the health authority serving Prince George, also recorded some of the province's highest drug-toxicity death rates during 2025.
The statistics add important perspective to the wildlife reports. The appearance of poisoned crows is unusual, but the presence of a highly toxic and unpredictable unregulated drug supply in the region is not.
The crow cases do not by themselves measure whether decriminalisation worked
British Columbia's former policy remains politically contested. Supporters of decriminalisation argued that treating personal possession primarily as a health issue could reduce stigma and help people engage with services. Critics pointed to public drug use, disorder and concerns about community safety.
The provincial government itself substantially tightened the rules in 2024 before allowing the exemption to expire in 2026.
Evidence from the policy period also resists a simple narrative. A provincial report to Health Canada found that possession offences and small drug seizures fell substantially under the original exemption. After public-space possession was excluded in May 2024, both measures rose compared with the same months in 2023, although they remained below comparable pre-decriminalisation levels from 2022.
Drug deaths, meanwhile, cannot be attributed to a single policy change. British Columbia's toxic-drug emergency began years before decriminalisation, and fentanyl and other unpredictable substances in the unregulated supply have remained central to the mortality crisis.
The province declared a public-health emergency over overdose deaths in April 2016, nearly seven years before the decriminalisation pilot began.
That chronology does not resolve the policy debate, but it establishes an important distinction: the existence of severe drug-related harm in Prince George predates decriminalisation, while the current crow cases emerged after the pilot had ended.
Wildlife exposure adds another dimension to an established public-health emergency
For Good Caws Crow Rescue Society, the immediate concern is less ideological than practical: keeping contaminated material away from wildlife and reaching affected birds before they die.
The organisation's experience suggests that urban environmental management can become part of the response. Covered rubbish bins, rapid removal of hazardous waste and coordination between outreach workers, municipal services and wildlife rescuers could reduce opportunities for animals to encounter dangerous residues.
The cases also illustrate how the effects of an unregulated drug market can spread through a community in unexpected ways. Human health remains the overwhelming concern — thousands of people have died across British Columbia during the emergency — but contaminated public spaces can create additional risks for pets and wildlife.
There is still an important unanswered scientific question. Without laboratory testing of the affected crows and material they may have consumed, the precise drugs responsible for individual incidents cannot be established solely from symptoms or response to naloxone.
What is documented is that Prince George wildlife rescuers have encountered an unusual rise in severely impaired crows, veterinarians consider the symptoms consistent with toxic-drug exposure, and naloxone has been used as part of their treatment.
For a rescue organisation founded to rehabilitate injured and orphaned wild birds, carrying an opioid-reversal medication is an unexpected adaptation. It is also a reminder that the consequences of a toxic drug supply do not necessarily stop with the people directly consuming it.
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