Perry Ridge peaceful protest ends peacefully by police
By Nelson Daily Editor
By Timothy Schafer, The Nelson Daily
What was shaping up as a confrontation between police and protestors over logging on Perry Ridge ended peacefully Wednesday morning.
Around 40 people — including 10 children — had set up camp on Little Slocan Forest Service Road near Slocan Wednesday morning, in peaceful protest of the continuation of logging in the watershed on Perry Ridge.
At 10:30 a.m. nine members of the Kootenay Boundary Regional Detachment arrived at the protest camp, a tent type structure built on the side of the roadway limiting or restricting any vehicle traffic to the upper service road logging area.
Last Friday an injunction order was upheld in BC Supreme Court in Nelson instructing anyone “attending at or near the Perry Ridge Forest Service Road and/or Little Slocan Forest Service Road … be restrained, enjoined and prohibited until trial or other disposition of this action” if they interfere with the logging operations.
However, a “protection camp” was formed on the logging road earlier this week — located at kilometre seven of Little Slocan Forest Service Road — to protest the logging.
It was billed as a peaceful camp, but the RCMP informed the protestors they would be enforcing the injunction from Sunshine Logging Co.
Wednesday morning the BC Supreme Court injunction was read and explained.
Following discussions between the RCMP, the logging company and protesters, the protest group permitted vehicle access to employees of the Sunshine Logging Company.
“The protesters were cooperative and compliant,” said RCMP Staff Sgt. Dan Siebel. “Protesters dismantled their tent shelter, extinguished their campfire and packed up their belongings and departed. There were no arrests or problems.”
The Sinixt Nation’s judicial review application against logging on Perry Ridge was dismissed in BC Supreme Court in Vancouver Feb. 25.
The application — made by way of petition against the Province’s issuance of a timber sale licence on Perry Ridge — was dismissed “by way of oral reasons” by Judge J. Willcock on the basis the Sinixt “are not a group capable of sufficiently precise definition with respect to their group membership.”
The Sinixt were contending the Crown failed to do its duty to consult them in the course of issuing Timber Sale Licence A80073 to Kaslo’s Sunshine Logging for the forest on Perry Ridge.
On Nov. 4, 2010, Justice Willcock conditionally upheld the Sinixt’s action of interest to protect Perry Ridge by staying Sunshine Logging’s injunction to remove a November blockade by the Sinixt on a Forest Service access road.
Perry Ridge is the source of drinking water for many residents in the lower Slocan River valley, some 30 kilometres northwest of Nelson.
