The Okanagan Forest Task Force says it will finish 2023 by having collected a quarter of a million pounds of garbage from backcountry roads this year.
On Friday, the volunteer group posted to social media that it had cleaned up 800 pounds from garbage dumped along Beaver Lake Road in the Central Okanagan.
Including that 800 pounds, the task force said it collected 255,184 pounds of rubbish since Jan 1: 103,660 pounds of garbage and 151,524 pounds of metal.
The task force added that since its inception in 2016, it has collected 835,669 pounds of garbage from dump sites on or near local backcountry roads.
And on Dec. 22, members hauled out an abandoned motorhome from the backcountry. And on Nov. 29, a member found a stolen Ford F350 pickup truck that had been gutted.
The OFTF says its goals are “to keep our forests clean, and to bring public awareness to the problem of illegal dumping and vandalism in our local forested areas.”
More information about the OFTF is available online.