Forestry blockade crew arrested
Several members of the Extinction Rebellion-led group that had been blockading access roads to Westfor logging operations in Digby County have been arrested by the RCMP.
The arrests of up to eight people took place early Tuesday afternoon, according to Extinction Rebellion (XR) spokeswoman Debbie Stultz-giffin, who was not at the forestry site located in the New France area of the county.
“We’re prepared to be arrested in protest of the provincial government ignoring the Endangered Species Act and properly protecting the (mainland) moose,” said Stultz-giffin.
She said those arrested were expected to be released from police custody in Digby later Tuesday afternoon or evening on the promise to appear in court, possibly on charges of trespassing or contempt for failing to comply with a court order.
The RCMP said Tuesday afternoon that they would not immediately be commenting on the arrests.
An interim injunction was served Friday to members of XR at the sites of their two blockades.
The injunction bars the defendants, or anyone acting on their behalf, from blockading roads or interfering with access anywhere where Westfor is licensed to cut.
Nina Newington, an XR spokeswoman, said earlier this week that a number of her group were prepared to be arrested as they maintained the blockades.
The injunction specifically mentions the areas in Digby County but its scope encompasses any woodland site on Crown land in southwest Nova Scotia where cuts have been approved.
“That seems like a pretty massive overreach,” Newington said about the scope of the injunction.
The company has said it will seek a permanent injunction from the court on Jan. 26 and 27 and Newington said XR will probably ask for the permanent injunction hearing to be held earlier so that the protest group can challenge the wide range of the ban.
There have been as many as 14 people involved in the two blockades that had been set up about 15 kilometres apart as the crow flies. There were closer to a dozen there at the time of the arrests.
The XR group first established a blockade and encampment in the area on Oct. 21 and added another blockade about a month later.
“The thought is that the injunction didn’t say that we can’t camp there, so the actual blockade may flip into being more of an observational post and a place to carry on educational components from,” StultzGiffin said of potential protest action going forward.
The interim injunction claims Westfor and its contractors have suffered significant financial losses and damages due to the blockade which has crucially cut into their estimated profit margin of $2.8 million. Westfor, a consortium of 13 mills established in 2016 by the Nova Scotia government to increase the efficiency of forest management on Crown land in the province, may seek damages against the defendants.
Extinction Rebellion has continually demanded an immediate moratorium on all proposed and current logging on Crown lands from Fourth Lake south to the Napier River in Digby County, a moratorium that it says should remain intact until ecologically based landscape use planning for the area has been conducted by independent ecologists and biologists, as recommended in the 2018 Lahey forestry report.
Citing government inaction regarding several endangered species, including the mainland moose, several nature organizations took Lands and Forestry to court last year, arguing that the minister had contravened the Endangered Species Act.
Justice Christa M. Brothers agreed with the complainants, citing “a suite of failures of government” in her written decision in late May.
The judge agreed the minister had failed to implement the Endangered Species Act as it pertains to six representative species that included the mainland moose.
Brothers found that the minister had failed to review the moose recovery plan and had failed to set out core habitat in its recovery plan.
Extinction Rebellion requested a meeting with Derek Mombourquette, the lands and forestry minister, on Nov. 11 to discuss its demands and later staged a sit-in at the minister’s office in downtown Halifax.
The minister has not replied to the group.
A spokeswoman for the Lands and Forestry Department said earlier this month that the minister is “reviewing all correspondence he has received on this issue and will be responding to each one.”