The Okanagan Forest Task Force and its volunteers spent nearly an entire day clearing several abandoned homeless encampments along James Lake Forest Service Road.
The group began their cleanup around 9 a.m. on Saturday, and by 11 a.m. they had already filled an entire dumpster that can hold around 3,000 kilograms of rubbish.
“This is definitely one of the worst areas we’ve seen in this specific location,” said Kane Blake, founder of the Okanagan Forest Task Force.
“This stretch of road is about three kilometers long and there is another pile of rubbish at the back of the same camp.”
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The task force is made up of volunteers from across the Okanagan who work to keep local forests clean and prevent illegal dumping.
They also have a dive team that cleans up the area’s trash lakes. On a typical dive, the team removes up to 70 kilograms of trash from the water, with some of the most common things being household waste and many bottles and cans.
“I’ve seen people step on broken glass a lot, it stinks and then some of the bottles we found, I actually find dead fish inside them because they go in, they grow and they can’t get back out,” Ajay said. Weintz, a diver with the Okanagan Forest Task Force.
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“So that’s probably pretty damaging to the ecosystem.”
That same damage applies to land and wildlife.
“There’s also been a lot of food thrown out that attracts bears and other wildlife, which could very easily be injured by a lot of the trash we’ve seen here today,” Blake said.
A volunteer who attended Saturday’s cleanup at James Lake FSR says more needs to be done to keep the Okanagan hinterland in good shape.
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“Sadly I don’t seem surprised by what’s happening in the field and I really feel there should be more government involvement to oversee these sites when they get like this,” said Robin Bloch, a volunteer.
“It’s our backcountry, people like to come here and enjoy what we have to offer in BC”
This cleanup puts the Okanagan Forest Task Force on approximately a quarter of a million kilograms of trash removed from various sites around the Okanagan since 2016.