RCMP make 27 more arrests at B.C. old-growth logging blockades

RCMP enforcement of a B.C. Supreme Court injunction against blockades set up to prevent old-growth logging on Vancouver Island continued this weekend.

The Mounties say they arrested 20 people on Friday, who werereleased in the town ofLake Cowichan, while seven people arrested Saturday werereleased in Port Renfrew.

They say officers have made 989 arrests since enforcement beganaround the Fairy Creek watershed, including 110 people who have beenarrested more than once.

Earlier thisweek the number ofarrestsexceeded those during civil disobedience over logging in the 1990s. The current protests on Vancouver Island have become the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history.

Over the weekend police say officers took one of the protesters to a waiting ambulanceafter the person fell down a ravine and injured their head around1:15 a.m. on Saturday.

Protesters said in an Instagram post that the person who fell was not seriously injured and did not require treatment from paramedics.

Later Saturday, police say they cleared people out of a few smallcamps.

They saidenhanced evening patrols would continue on Sunday.

Meanwhile, protesters maintain that the RCMP is in contempt of court for how it is enforcingthe injunction. In July, a B.C. Supreme Court justice ruled that police had not established that blocking access to the site of blockades was reasonably necessary, and declared RCMP actions were "unlawful."

Old growth logging moratorium

The B.C. government approved the request of three VancouverIsland First Nationsto temporarily defer old-growth logging acrossabout 2,000 hectares in the Fairy Creek and central Walbran areasthis summer, but the protests have continued.

Old-growth forests outside the deferred areas are still at riskof logging, members of the protest group dubbed the RainforestFlying Squad have said. The group says the civil disobedience will only end once the province puts in place a moratorium on the logging of old-growth trees.

Since May, the RCMP have been enforcing the court injunctiongranted to the Teal-Jones Group, the forestry company that holds theharvesting licence in the area.

The injunction is set to expire later this month and courthearings are scheduled in Nanaimo this week over an application byTeal-Jones for a year-long extension.