Last week we reported on an 8-month long blockade in Canada against logging company Teal Jones Group now the protesters have set up a new blockade over the Easter weekend after the BC Supreme Court granted Teal Jones an injunction that would allow the arrest and removal of protesters. Sources: Timberbiz, Times Colonist
Protesters with the Rainforest Flying Squad said that Teal Jones has not yet served them with the injunction at Caycuse nor the Fairy Creek area near Port Renfrew, but they are ready to defy the order and face arrest. They said they “will not back down until the area is saved.”
The group is calling on Premier John Horgan to implement the recommendations of the Old Growth Strategic Review and to defer logging in the Caycuse Valley and all other at-risk old-growth forests.
The new blockade severs access to six approved cut-blocks in the Caycuse watershed. Teal Jones has been logging there for several years.
“These ancient, coastal rainforest trees, growing in fertile valley bottoms, are among the biggest on the planet,” Joshua Wright, a spokesman for the Rainforest Flying Squad, said in a statement. “It’s a huge betrayal.”
Over the weekend, falling crews arrived in trucks with saws to work in a new cut area, “but they were peacefully turned away,” the group said.
Demonstrators are also beefing up the blockade at Fairy Creek, where Teal Jones is trying to log about 200 hectares along a ridge above a valley of protected old-growth trees. About 200 protesters are expected to block the access point to the Fairy Creek watershed this week, according to organizers.
That blockade has been in place now for eight months and was the focus of Teal Jones’ injunction application in court. Teal Jones estimates the blockades have jeopardized hundreds of jobs through its workforce chain of fallers to mills.
