Activists connected to the old-growth logging protests at Fairy Creek brought their dispute to Mesachie Lake on Friday, June 25, blockading a yard containing logging equipment.
Teal Jones confirmed that it leases office space at the site, which houses operations of several businesses.
Loggers arrived at the yard on Friday morning to discover a number of protesters chained to the gate, blocking the only entrance to the yard. The Rainforest Flying Squad reported via the Fairy Creek Blockade Facebook page that they were all women, led by a protester who goes by the name “Lady Chainsaw.”
According to the RFS Facebook post, a frustrated logger used his truck to spray gravel on the protesters, at which point another protester moved his own vehicle to protect the women. The logger then got into a front loader, apparently intending to use it to move the vehicle out of his way.
At that point, a protester jumped on the front loader’s bucket and locked himself to it with a bicycle lock. When told to get off the machine, he told the logger he didn’t have the key to the lock. Police later arrived and arrested several protesters.
A total of 18 protesters were arrested over the course of the day on June 25 for breaching the BC Supreme Court injunction that prohibits blockades on Tree Farm Licence 46, on which Teal Jones owns the logging rights.
From May 17, when the RCMP started enforcing the injunction, to June 25, the most recent date for which police have released numbers, 320 protesters have been arrested, including at least 14 who have been arrested more than once.
