An organizer with a Sunshine Coast protest says that some activists are still willing to resist a Squamish logging company despite a court order forcing protesters to stand down.
“Some people are prepared to get arrested,” Ross Muirhead of environmentalist group Elphinstone Logging Focus told The Chief on Jan. 31. “Some people erected a blockade again.”
Muirhead said on that day, protestors were served with an injunction.
The court order forces protestors to stop blockading access to cut block A93884, which Squamish’s Black Mount Logging has won the rights to log. The block resides in the Clack Creek Forest, which is between Gibsons and Sechelt.
“[Protesters] want to have one final discussion with Black Mount and restate our position to them,” he said.
However, at some point, protesters may have to pay their last respects to the forests and let loggers through, Muirhead said.
Black Mount Logging secured a court injunction against any attempts by protesters to block its crews from working in the cutblock on Jan. 28, but as of Monday afternoon the company had not attempted to resume the cutting it began on Jan. 12.
ELF, meanwhile, has been encouraging supporters to contact Forests Minister Doug Donaldson’s office in an effort to get him to intervene to have BCTS offer the company a different block to log without financial penalty.
BC Timber Sales awarded Black Mount the cutting rights in block A93884 last year. ELF lost a court challenge to have the cutblock auction stopped, and has so far failed to get the province to agree to its proposal to have the company granted cutting rights to another block instead.
Black Mount’s injunction petition claimed ELF members and supporters “illegally blocked, obstructed and prevented the access of Black Mount and its fallers to the site … [and] the blockaders, and in particular defendant Muirhead, stated they would be there ‘for the duration.’”
The company claimed it suffered financial losses as a result of the ELF actions and in supplementary papers filed after its initial petition, the company estimated the stumpage owing, which it would have to pay “despite not being able to sell any timber,” at more than $2 million.
As well, the company said its workers “would also be adversely impacted flowing from loss of pay, with limited or no alternate sources of work, if Black Mount is unable to proceed with its anticipated harvest.”
ELF argued in court that because long-standing concerns about logging in that area have not been addressed by the province, they “find themselves with no recourse to protect the important ecological values of the Clack Creek Forest… They have found it necessary to take personal action to prevent logging from proceeding.”
