In the summer of 2021 outside the coastal town of Port Renfrew in the Fairy Creek watershed, a campaign to stop old growth logging took off, becoming one of the biggest acts of civil disobedience in Canadian history. But among the thousands that partook, not everyone chose to use civil disobedience tactics. Perhaps stepping outside of the logic of making demands of companies or the province to stop the logging, some chose to take matters into their own hands.
Late January of this year, BC minister of forests Ravi Parmar released a statement in response to reported tree spiking in the Fairy Creek watershed. Tree spiking involves driving a large metal nail deep into the trunk of a tree, meaning that if it gets logged it will cause damage to equipment. The technique has been covered extensively in the Eco Defense Manual, and has been a mainstay of the radical environmental movement. Parmar condemned the activity and announced that there is an ongoing criminal investigation. As might be expected, the minister said he “just can’t imagine someone who would have the will to go and spike a tree with the intention of hurting a forestry worker”. To the best of our knowledge, the only injury tied to tree spiking that we know of in North America occurred at a mill in California in 1987 and was the outcome of workers not using proper safety equipment.
According to the media reports, the ministry became aware of the alleged activity after their office in Naniamo received packages with photos and a message that made claims of tree spiking.
Notably, this is not the only act of spiking reported, and we will likely never know the true extent that sabotage played a role in the Fairy Creek watershed. The director of indigenous partnerships and strategic relations for the Teal Jones Group – the logging company responsible for the logging of old growth at Fairy Creek – said “we have pulled numerous logs out of our log inventory that had been spiked”. He also claimed that at the Teal Jones mill “there was catastrophic damage done to the saw” after attempting to process a spiked tree.