Found: the salal thieves’ cache
Things are never boring in the Gabriola woods. Today we spotted salal hanging from a tree. That led us to a massive cache of salal, all bundled and ready for sale to the floral industry in Nanaimo.This is just a small part of it:
Then we saw Mr Salal Harvester himself, picking away. (!) There were no vehicles parked anywhere nearby, so I guess the routine is to drop off pickers in the woods, then collect them — and their harvest — at the end of a day’s picking.
Based on what I’ve seen lately, I believe that several truckloads of salal are being illegally harvested from Gabriola’s forest every day. Much of this takes place in the woods off The Tunnel on North Road.
The Gabriola RCMP say that this happens all over the island. When they catch the salal-pickers, the usual refrain is but I didn’t know it was illegal,
which doesn’t hold up so well when records indicate that the same vehicle has been used for salal-picking on numerous occasions, and the pickers have been told before.
When caught, the pickers aren’t allowed to abscond with their harvest; they’ve got to put it back
even though it will die. The land owner decides whether to press charges or not.
The RCMP staffperson added that they’ve never caught a Gabriolan harvesting salal. The thieves’ vehicles are always registered to Nanaimo addresses.
So, great. We’ve got Nanaimo people coming over to steal Gabriola’s salal every day.
Now that the salal harvester guy is gone for the day, I can see exactly where he’s been and what he’s taken. The mess is depressing.
Filed in Gabriola Island,native plants 2 Comments so far
2 Responses to “Found: the salal thieves’ cache”
specialk on 08 Apr 2009 at 11:57 pm #
Excellent work figuring this out!
So how do the pickers get caught? Will the RCMP act if they get a phone call tip? Will the land owners get contacted EACH time a picker is caught on their land. Does the RCMP really contact the land owner each time – or just tell the pickers to leave their stash – and go away for now, to avoid the paperwork?
Should their maybe be a sign coming off the ferry on this side saying “Harvesting of Salal is illegal”? Can their be some sort of follow-through to make sure the people that illegally harvest our vegetation are indeed fined?
I know, I know… I’m all questions. Well maybe one thing I could do, because I secretly don’t like the pickers coming and destroying habitat and making profit from taking materials from our island, is make up letter-sized laminated signs “Salal picking is Illegal here” and selling them for cheap at the Village.
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This kind of reminds me of someone on the island who takes stuff from the beach(es) and puts the contents such as sand/stones/shells/etc into a clear plastic bag and sells them as Gabriola souvenirs. What would happen if these truly became wildly popular… or someone wanted to do the same on Ebay or similar… would they just keep taking and taking from our natural landscape? Like one of your recent articles on the Natives harvesting cedar bark – without hurting the tree … think about sustainability and impact people!
Gabriolan on 09 Apr 2009 at 12:37 am #
The pickers get caught when people report them. So if you see somebody throwing an armload of salal into a pickup truck or van, and if you tell the cops about it, they’ll try to watch the ferry line-up for the vehicle you describe… if they’ve got time that day. Of course, having a license plate or any other identifying information is a big help.
I know of one time when an RCMP officer did attempt to attend the scene of the crime in the forest, but that’s difficult. The cops are busy, and they’d likely need a local hiker to guide them into the woods, anyway. Unless the person making the report has a GPS unit, it’s hard to specify a location in the middle of the woods. (And besides, do the RCMP have GPS units? Would they know how to use one to find a waypoint?)
From what I’ve seen, I surmise that pickers used to park on North Road and leave their trucks or vans at the side of the road. (Or, say, in the Elder Cedars parking lot where I spotted them once.) While this still happens a bit, I get the feeling that they’re more careful now, instead preferring to drop off pickers and collect them later. That way there’s only a five minute period during which passers-by might observe a truck being loaded with salal. I suspect they arrive in the morning, and I think they’re out of the woods by 5pm, but I have only limited evidence on times.
As for what the RCMP do when they catch a salal thief, I’m not really sure. Why don’t you stop in at the RCMP office and ask? It would be nice if they knew that people are concerned about the issue.
Your idea about signs seems excellent to me. I think we need a broader strategy, too.