PEI

P.E.I. National Park visitors among best behaved in the country

When it comes to enforcing the rules, wardens at P.E.I. National Park have a relatively quiet time of it.

Domestic animal violations are the most common offence in the park

P.E.I. National Park visitors tended to obey the rules. (CBC)

When it comes to enforcing the rules, wardens at P.E.I. National Park have a relatively quiet time of it.

The rate of incidents per 100,000 visitors is amongst the lowest in the national park system, and about one third the national rate.

Statistics from Parks Canada for 2014-15 show the national average for parks with more than 100,000 visitors was 0.79 incidents for 100,000 visitors, but only 0.26 at P.E.I. National Park.

Only Alberta's Elk Island (0.18), and Kootenay (0.24) and Yoho (0.2) — both in B.C. — had lower rates.

Dogs and liquor

P.E.I. National Park had the highest number of domestic animal violations in the park system, at 20. Visitors are not allowed to have dogs on park beaches during the summer months. There were a further four violations involving dogs being off leash.

There were close to 500,000 visitors to P.E.I. National Park in 2014-15. (CBC)

There were also 20 liquor violations, the other largest contributor to the total 84 violations in 2014-15.

Gros Morne in Newfoundland had the highest infraction rate, at 2.16, with illegal use of ATVs and snowmobiles being the biggest contributors.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kevin Yarr

Web journalist

Kevin Yarr is the early morning web journalist at CBC P.E.I. Kevin has a specialty in data journalism, and how statistics relate to the changing lives of Islanders. He has a BSc and a BA from Dalhousie University, and studied journalism at Holland College in Charlottetown. You can reach him at kevin.yarr@cbc.ca.