A group of protesters keen on saving old-growth forests are planning to block traffic along the Trans-Canada Highway on Vancouver Island indefinitely beginning next week.
Save Old Growth, a collective of activists who describe themselves as a “new direct action group,” said in a press release Sunday that members will be targeting sections of the Trans-Canada Highway in Nanaimo and Victoria starting on Monday (Jan. 10).
The group says that at first, TCH off-ramps will be blocked multiple times per week at first, but that the “frequency and scale” of their actions will increase until all old-growth logging is stopped. Other locations that will be targeted include Vancouver and communities near Revelstoke that the Trans-Canada Highway passes through.
“Many in the group will be risking repeated arrests to the point of imprisonment. The provincial government and the provincial minister of forestry have refused to act in the best interests of the public. We are declaring the Trans-Canada Highway a site of permanent nonviolent civil resistance,” Simon Fraser University student Zain Haq, a spokesperson and organizer for the campaign and member of Extinction Rebellion, said in a press release.
RELATED: Judge rules against extending injunction on old-growth blockades at Fairy Creek
Over 15 people in total are expected to risk arrest just on the first day of the campaign, according to the group, which is asking motorists to “keep their cars below” 30 km/h on the highway over the coming weeks.
“During the next 6 months the government will be faced with the dilemma of either implementing their own promises or arresting and imprisoning hundreds of British Columbians,” added Haq.
Save Old Growth, which includes members of Extinction Rebellion, describes itself as a “new direct action group” that demands the B.C. government to put an end to old-growth logging. They say they are part of a group of emerging organizations around the world, such as Blockade Australia, and Last Generation,
“The provincial government has broken the social contract and failed to protect B.C. families from the now regular disasters besetting our cities and towns. Old-growth forests are the lungs of our planet and the B.C. NDP and their corporate pals are lung cancer. There are no jobs on a dead planet,” Brent Eichler, member and the president of Unifor local 950 and an organizer for the campaign, said in a press release.
The planned blockades come amid protests over old-growth logging at Fairy Creek, where activists have been blocking Teal Cedar’s access to the watershed north of Port Renfrew for more than a year, during which time more than 1,000 arrests have been made — making it the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history.
It also comes a few months after environmentalist David Suzuki told CHEK News during an Extinction Rebellion Vancouver Island protest in Victoria that pipelines would be “blowing up” if leaders don’t pay attention to what’s going on — remarks he later apologized for following widespread criticism.
RELATED: David Suzuki says pipelines will be ‘blown up’ if leaders don’t act on climate change
With files from The Canadian Press
CHEK News
