Pro-park billboards vandalized again

National park supporters are discouraged — but not defeated – after vandals targeted another one of their billboards last week.

A passer-by noticed April 14 that the sign “skin” had been peeled off a wooden billboard frame on Highway 3 near the Osoyoos airport, according to Doreen Olson, co-ordinator of the South Okanagan Similkameen National Park Network.

The damage was done just nine days after the sign was relocated from Cawston, where vandals in mid-March chopped down the billboard on which it was hung there.

“We moved it (to Osoyoos) because we thought there would be more people in the area, more secure,” said Olson.

Her group, which shelled out $2,500 for the missing sign, intends to replace it.

“The thing is, (the vandals) are just bullying us into silence and, if we don’t put it back up, they’ve won,” she said.

The sign, which was approximately four metres wide and three metres tall, highlighted survey results that show broad public support for a national park in the South Okanagan-Similkameen and touted the benefits of a new nature preserve.

Olson figures whoever took the sign would have needed a truck to haul it away. A beer can was found at the scene, as was the case in Cawston, where a knife was also located.

Both incidents remain under investigation by Mounties, who couldn’t be reached for comment Monday.

Total damage in Osoyoos and Cawston is estimated at $8,000, and the South Okanagan Similkameen Park Network is now fundraising to come up with cash for a new sign.

To help with the effort, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society will collect money on the network’s behalf and issue tax receipts.

Donations can be made online at www.cpawsbc.org/donate or by sending a cheque marked “for SOS billboard” to CPAWS BC, 410-698 Seymour St., Vancouver, B.C., V6B 3K6.