Elphinstone Logging Focus (ELF) has set its sights on a new target following the Feb. 29 sale of a contentious BC Timber Sales cutblock.
The Day Road Forest is part of an Island Timberlands (IT) district lot, an area the group describes as an important wildlife corridor and popular recreational destination.
"The Day Road Forest campaign will heat up over the next few months," said ELF president Ross Muirhead. "Another thing that is happening is the organizing of a 'knitting bomb' in that forest.This is being done by Joah Lui of Rolling Earth Retreat who has property adjacent to the IT property."
Muirhead said he and ELF member Hans Penner had recently been busy deconstructing a disputed cabin on the slopes of Mount Elphinstone.
The two were issued trespass notices by provincial authorities in reaction to the structure that Muirhead recently said had the potential to be used as a protest site against logging in A87124, the BC Timber Sales cutblock that was sold to a log home company in Pemberton.
But now the focus has shifted to calling upon IT to donate the parcel, with ELF declaring that a "community agreement will be broken if the majority of intact mature forests [are] now logged."
Penner said that in March 1997 the previous owners of the lot decided to harvest the region and a community protest resulted in an agreement to instead selectively harvest the area.
He said this community agreement was the result of discussions between contractor Ken Sneddon, a local forester and the owners of the land, who subsequently sold it to IT.
ELF said their position is that IT inherited this "understanding in principle" when they purchased the land.
"If any logging is to occur in the upper section, it should only happen in the second growth tree farms and not in the older forests," said ELF in a press release. "IT should not be back into [Day Road Forest] for another 60 to 80 years."
But Sneddon, the local contractor identified by ELF in this community agreement, said "that's not how it went down at all. There was never any blockade," he said. "I never saw Hans Penner or Ross Muirhead or Laurie Bloom anywhere."
Despite ELF's claims, Sneddon said he is uninterested in getting into an argument with the group. Instead, he wanted to remind residents that with careful planning, a balance could be struck between economic imperatives and community enjoyment.
An alternative to minority groups claiming they represent the community, Sneddon said, is the actual involvement of residents in the planning process.
"It's a wonderful and bountiful gift and we should treat it respectfully," Sned-don said of the Day Road Forest. "People have to work together. You don't come to the table wearing your hat."
