Metro Vancouver staff want fewer off-leash trails and more no-dog trails in Pacific Spirit Regional Park.
Next Wednesday, director of regional parks
Mike Redpath will ask the regional parks committee
to back a plan to better manage the more than one million dogs that visit the Vancouver park each year.
“Due to an increasing volume of visitors, including dogs, the park is experiencing more pressure on its trails and habitat. This creates dog-related impacts on visitor experience, public safety-incidents, and ecology,” Redpath’s report states.
He said that between 2020 and 2024 there were almost 500 reported dog-related safety incidents in the 860-hectare park that surrounds the University of British Columbia.
“Incidents include injuries to park visitors such as dog bites, visitors being chased or knocked down, aggressive behaviour, injuries to other dogs, or dog-related conflicts between park visitors,” the report states.
Pacific Spirit Regional Park is Metro Vancouver’s largest park and attracts four million visitors a year, of which one-third come with a dog.
Redpath said that park monitoring found that almost two-thirds of visiting dogs are found off-leash on leash-required trails.
A survey showed 94 per cent of visitors with dogs have a positive experience in the park, while only 24 per cent of visitors without dogs reported having a positive experience.
At present, an average 61.5 per cent of trails are off leash, and Redpath wants that brought down to 51 per cent. Around 12 per cent of trails are for humans only and that would go up to 14 per cent under the plan.
The biggest change would be for on-leash trails, which would increase by 35 per cent.
As of May 2026, new signage will be erected around the park with colour-coded signs showing green for leash optional, orange for leash required and red for no dogs — as well as warning signs to keep dogs out of streams.
