5TH Attack on Environmental Protesters Defending Endangered Mountain Caribou in Kootenays : WC Mediawire

The 5th and most recent incident occurred Thursday, September 9th at 6am when, yet again, a truck slowly approached the protesters at their camp located north of the West Kootenay village of Argenta, and then accelerated
rapidly forcing them to leap away from the vehicle to avoid being crushed. The difference is that this time the driver of the truck, reportedly bearing a "MID-BOUNDARY contracting" logo on the door, not only drove his vehicle through the protest camp, but also chased down a protester with his vehicle, forcing the protester to dive off the road into the rocks below. Again, the pattern of violence has been the same for each of the 5 attacks suggesting that the assaults are being coordinated.

The RCMP must directly contact the logging contractors or other alleged perpetrators and instruct them to cease and desist. It is a matter of time before a protester is seriously injured or killed.

The RCMP must also establish a permanaent presence at the site of the conflict to keep the peace.

The local logging company holding the cutting license for the Westfall River Valley is Cooper Creek Cedar Ltd @ 250-366-4486, of Cooper Creek, BC. The logging plan was developed with assistance from Timberland Consultants Ltd @ 250-354-1152, and the logging crews are from Mid-Boundary Contracting of Midway, BC @ 250-449-2322.

Video evidence of the attacks is currently being transported out of the area and will be prepared for distribution within 24 hours.

For further information contact:The Westfall Information Centre @ 250-352-9119 or visit http://www.westfallinfo.org, or Sara Fudge @ 250-354-4482, or Glada MacIntyre @ 250-366-4440

I've hauled logs out of the westfall and have yet to see a caribiou.If you talk to the local hunters or hikers you will find that the last caribiou to be spotted in the region was 25 years ago at 50 km on the DUNCAN AND THAT WAS A SINGLE animal.As for the recent incedents they fail to show the provocative nature of the protesters.The forest in the westfall region is beautiful and dying. Logging this area responsibly is far better than a fire.

Uhhh, dosen't that just prove the point? The cariboo have been declining, they are endangered, get it?

Besides, sitting on a road is not being 'provocative'. Attempting to run people over is disgusting behaviour, and illegal. If the campers are doing something illegal, then they will be removed, but attempting to run poeple over is.

Chekc your head out.

The link http://www.westfallinfo.org appears to be broken. Is the site down or is there a typo?

This reminds me a lot of what the Elaho started out as. The problem that these people have is that they are a lot more isolated and it will be easier for the RCMP to turn a blind eye unless more noise is generated.

You can bet if 5 acts against of violence against loggers were committed there would be a response by now though.

I saw two animals from the South Selkirk herd last friday.
I was climbing the ridges around Ripple Mountain.I saw alot of animals that day, including Elk and Bighorn. Allthough I saw a few Elk hunters on ATV's on the Ripple Creel FSR, I met no hunters in the sub-alpine and alpine meadows. It has been a wet summer and the alpine is still very green. Although there are some alpine hunters around with the odd Sheep ticket, for the most part hunters dont not get very far from thier trucks or ATV's, and rarely cross forest basins which are steep, and bush and downfall covered. These old-growth basins and Alpine slopes are the Mountain Cariboo Home. Perhaps that is why certian hunters have not seen Caribou.

Caribou leave a very distinctive track. They are very wide U-patterns adapted for snow travel, with two large "toes" at the heel. In the winter when the Caribou survives on tree lichens, thier scat is very black and has traces of lichen. They are easy to track.

I have witnessed logging in the Kootenays into the Alpine, I have dozens of photographs documenting it. Logging and road building have intruded the Cariboo's habitat. These roads bring increased predation on the Cariboo. The roads provide easier corridors for snowmobilers. I have witnessed Wolf following fresh snowmobile tracks.

In June of this year I was in the Westfall Valley and found caribou tracks. I have photos of the tracks. In the 2 short times I visited the valley this summer I saw a large bull elk, 2 black bear families, a grizzly bear digging, a mule deer just having given birth at snow line, and a muskrat. The ancient trees are huge and I believe some of the oldest in B.C. Craig Pettitt of the Valhalla Society aged a similar size tree in the next valley to the west and it was 1800 years old. This tree was growing at around 2000 feet. The ones in the
Westfall are at about 4000 feet, so a much shorter growing season. It wouldn't surprise me if these trees are over 2000 years old. This is an incredible valley and needs protection as an extension to Glacier National Park. Check out Wildcanada.net for how you can help.

This is response to the thread started by Logger. I do not know about Caribou sightings so I cannot argue that. I am by no means anti logging but I do take issue with the many aspects of the industry. I do agree with you that "some" protestors just like "some" loggers step over the bounds but that is where it ends. The forest is beautiful and dying??!! That reminds me of the good old days when foresters were saying that Old Growth is decadent and overmature. This area is an inland rain forest so saying that logging it before it burns is amazing! It is not a dry lodgepole pine or ponderosa forest. The overmature statement is so rediculous because the day after you are born, you start dying! Let's put people in homes in their 40's! A tree that is 1,000 - 2,000 years old can still have another 300 - 500 years + in it's lifetime. In this time the tree does what it does best, filter our air and water and feed the forest and it's inhabitants. My biggest beef with many of the logging companies and our current government, is that they want to punch logging roads into every (explitive) corner of our province. Our park system is a joke and personally I feel everything pristine should be protected (this is our own damn fault because we have destroyed some much and saved so little) and the rest of the province managed. I should be able to hike into a wilderness with forest workers, hikers, and the animals that live there and we all would come out winners. Instead, on my drives into the interior I am running into new clearcut after clearcut and this is only what I see from the road!! Get out of these pristine areas and manage the millions of acres of second growth trees, Old Growth areas that are fragmented and start to selectively log the way it should have been done from the start. End of rant....

Thank you to Shaun for that insightful rant. We need to preserve our forests for the sake of the future and the present for many reasons including conservation of caribou habitat.

Western Canada Wilderness Committee

Western Canada Wilderness Committee