News
The Supreme Court of BC has issued an injunction against Elphinstone Logging Focus and named Sunshine Coast persons from protesting and stopping logging activity by Bell Lumber and Pole Canada Ulc. and Malaspina Enterprises Ltd. in the Elphinstone Forest near Gibsons.
The Order, issued on May 15 in Vernon, BC, names ELF along with other persons as defendants. In the Order defendants are restrained from physically preventing logging activity and related operations in the Elphinstone area under Timber Sale License A87124 and various road use permits. The Order also prohibits "counseling" to prevent logging activity. It also authorizes any peace officer to arrest and detain any person that contravenes the Order.
The editor of Sustainable Coast Magazine, Beverly Saunders, was listed as a defendant in the order. When the attorney for the plantiffs, Kent Burnham, was contacted via email as to why she was included, he stated,
"We understood from the website that you were the editor. You were named because those directly involved refused to give their names. We were therefore required to list those we thought might be involved. We so advised the Court and have taken steps to have all names of individuals not directly involved in the protest removed from the publicly posted Orders. You will note that the Order prohibits counseling others to participate in activities that interfere with our client’s logging in the specified area, hence it’s delivery to you as editor." In further conversation and after finding that Saunders did not attend the protest, Burnham said her name would be removed.
Another coast resident, Mary Kay Wyman, was named in the order. She says she did not attend either protest. " I did visit the area before it was sold. It had the most gorgeous deep bed of moss covering the whole forest; in sharp contrast to the clearcut blocks next to it with junk logs strewn across the precious creeks."said Wyman. " I support my friends who had no names as they boldly stood protesting the clear-cut of a sacred grove of trees whose crime was to be accessible and therefore destroyed like 75% of Elphinstone forest area. I kept hoping these trees would become log homes for people but apparently not even that happened."
Ross Muirhead of ELF said that two separate roadblocks were held to protest the logging along the TrailFest-Wagon Forest. This area is within the proposed expanded 1,500Ha Mt. Elphinstone Provincial Park. Muirhead stated,
"When an intact forest provides more environmental services to a community over the long-term, how can it be the right course of action to destroy a forest for the sake of turning tress into telephone poles, that will become lifeless commodities for the sake of a few interests? Intact, functioning forests deserve rights at this critical junction in the Earth's history - for its own sake and for the sake of humanity which depends upon those services. There should come a time soon, when citizens can call the police to arrest those wiping out a functioning forest, with the full support of the law. Instead of concerned citizens being harassed by the government, police and lawyers when they witness destruction of a forest, that has been evolving since the last ice age, they should be in the right - upholding the higher and more noble, Laws for the Rights of Nature."
Thirteen protestors attended the roadblocks and refused to give their names to the police. It is assumed that some names were taken from car license plate registrations. Muirhead said he complained to Burnham about taking names from un-reliable sources.