Veteran activist arrested at Fairy Creek after long hiatus on the front lines

VANCOUVER ISLAND (NEWS 1130) – Hoping to put pressure on the B.C. government to halt old-growth logging on Vancouver Island, a veteran of the environmental movement took to the blockade lines, and was detained herself.

Tzeporah Berman was among a handful of protesters at the Fairy Creek watershed blockade who were removed by police for continuing a blockade of local logging west of Victoria on Saturday.

Berman says the B.C. government isn’t listening to an expert panel report put out a year ago, which calls for an end to old-growth logging — something she says the province has said it agrees with.

“I guess when they said that they were going to protect all the old growth, I mean that’s what the far majority of British Columbians want, that’s what we expected.” she says.

Berman says the government made a commitment.

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“They made a public promise to accept all the recommendations of their expert panel and the expert panel said ‘immediately defer logging in the key at risk old growth areas.'”

Berman gained international acclaim in the early 1990s for her efforts, along with local First Nations and Greenpeace, to stop old-growth logging in Clayoquot Sound near Tofino, B.C.

In a statement released Saturday evening, B.C. RCMP says a total of 33 people were arrested across multiple protest sites during the day, however, more arrests are pending as some protesters remain in the area under a court injunction.

On Monday, RCMP announced they would be temporarily controlling access to the Fairy Creek Watershed northeast of Port Renfrew, enforcing the April 1 injunction that allows Teal-Cedar Products to start logging activities.

Protesters have been maintaining multiple camps around Fairy Creek, as well as at cutblocks in the Caycuse area west of Cowichan Lake. Opponents of logging say the watershed is one of the last unprotected, intact, old-growth forests on southern Vancouver Island.

– With files from The Canadian Press