The Sundre RCMP has released photos of two suspects in the theft of thousands of dollars worth of wildlife monitoring equipment.
Authors: Stephanie Babych | Date: March 18, 2023 | Website: https://calgaryherald.com/news/crime/mayerthorpe-man-charged-for-mass-theft-of-sundre-area-trail-cameras-that-were-monitoring-wild-horses
This crime story reports on RCMP charges laid in connection with the repeated theft of HAWS's research trail cameras from the Williams Creek area southwest of Sundre. After a March 6 complaint that 54 cameras had been stolen, Sundre RCMP, with help from Mayerthorpe RCMP, executed a search warrant three days later at a Mayerthorpe residence and recovered 52 of them. A Mayerthorpe man, Lonnie Darrel Roth, was charged with mischief and possession of property obtained by crime, released on conditions, and scheduled to appear in provincial court on May 11. The article notes this was part of a larger pattern: HAWS had reported more than 100 cameras stolen from the same area since 2021, across several separate incidents, with total replacement costs running into the tens of thousands of dollars. The story underscores the operational cost and disruption these thefts caused to HAWS's ongoing horse-monitoring and population-count work.