Vancouver Island logging protesters hit out at arson ‘insinuation’

The RCMP logo is seen outside Royal Canadian Mounted Police "E" Division Headquarters, in Surrey, B.C., on Friday April 13, 2018. (Darryl Dyck / The Canadian Press)

VICTORIA — A group protesting old-growth logging on Vancouver Island is hitting out at an “insinuation” they were involved in the suspected arson of logging equipment last week.

Sgt. Kevin Mack with Lake Cowichan RCMP says officers responded to the scene of the suspected arson at a site operated by Fraser Valley Timber on Jan. 2., and they are keeping an “open eye to all possibilities.”

It says two grapple yarders and a log loader reportedly sustained more than $530,000 in damage in the fires that took place the previous night.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but media reports quoted a spokesman suggesting that the proximity of the protest camp wasn’t a coincidence.

But the Walbran Valley Blockade protest camp says its code “explicitly prohibits violence and the damage or destruction of property.”

It says it supports a full and transparent investigation and that “assigning blame before the facts are known serves to vilify forest protectors.”

The statement says that the group remains committed to a “peaceful presence, accountability, and truth, and will continue to act in accordance” with its code of conduct.

Mack says investigators do not have “any direct link to the protest group right now, other than the proximity of their camp,” about half an hour away by road from the Fraser Valley Timber site.

Mack says investigators have not spoken to the occupants of the protest camp in the Upper Walbran Valley.

Tsawak-qin Forestry Limited Partnership and Tsawak-qin Forestry Inc have been logging in the old-growth area since August 2025, and police have made a total of 15 arrests as they enforce a court injunction allowing the logging.

This report by Wolfgang Depner of The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 7, 2026.