The Okanagan Forest Task Force and its volunteers spent nearly an entire day cleaning up several abandoned homeless camps along the James Lake Forest Service Road.
The group started their cleaning around 9 a.m. on Saturday and by 11 a.m. they had already filled a full dumpster that could hold about 3,000 kilograms of garbage.
“It’s definitely one of the worst areas we’ve seen in this specific location,” said Okanagan Forest Task Force founder Ken Blake.
“This road is about three kilometers and there is another garbage dump behind it from the same camp.”
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The task force is a compilation of volunteers from across the Okanagan who work to keep local forests clean and stop illegal dumping.
They also have a scuba diving team that cleans the area’s lakes from waste. In a typical dive, the team removes up to 70 kilograms of garbage from the water, with some of the most common items being household garbage and lots of bottles and cans.
Ajay said, “I’ve seen people step on broken glass, it sucks and then some of the bottles that we get, I actually find dead fish inside them because they go in, grow and don’t come back.” get it.” Weintz, Okanagan Forest Task Force Scuba Diver.
“So it’s probably very damaging to the ecosystem.”
The same damage applies to land and wildlife.
“A lot of food has been dumped, which brings in bears and other wildlife, which can very easily get injured on a lot of the garbage we’ve seen here today,” Blake said.
A volunteer at James Lake FSR Saturday clean-up says more needs to be done to maintain the Okanagan’s backcountry.
Robin Bloch, a volunteer, said, “It’s sad that I haven’t been surprised by what’s going on in the backcountry and I really think there should be some more involvement on the part of the government to oversee these sites.”
“This is our backcountry, people love to come out here and enjoy what BC has to offer”
The cleanup sees the Okanagan Forest Task Force putting in nearly a million kilograms of waste removed from various sites around the Okanagan since 2016.