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.

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!