It’s a case where a picture is worth 1,000 words.
Luckily for Kane Blake, president of the Okanagan Forest Task Force, he happens to have 68 pictures.
The group was recently notified about a trailer dumped along Beaver Lake Road in Lake Country.
Blake said they posted some photos on social media.
“It didn’t take long for the person to come forward and talk to us,” Blake told Global News.
“And, yeah, I gave them a choice to let us post the photos or all of the photos, actually, or to issue a public apology. You know, this is one of those situations where you owe the public an apology, as well as everybody in our group.”
Blake said the group spends hours cleaning garbage out of the backcountry.
Earlier this month, they cleaned hundreds of pounds of dirty diapers left behind by a family who lives in the woods.
“We live in a time and age where being held accountable isn’t really something a lot of people do,” Blake added.
“And it’s time we start holding people accountable for their actions.”
He said the person who left the trailer did come forward and issue a public apology, saying they made a mistake and they were going to clean it up.
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“No matter what anybody says, everybody deserves a chance to give their side of the story or have a chance,” Blake added.
“I wanted to hear his side of the story, but also let him know that we are holding him accountable. You need to go clean your mess.”
Blake said the group also handed over all the photos and details to the B.C. Conservation Service.
Global News is not naming the person who came forward to claim responsibility but Blake said they were “100 per cent remorseful” and “regretted his choices.”
This is not the first travel trailer they have come across. Blake says many get dumped in the backcountry because they are hard to dispose of correctly.
“There’s a lot of garbage, and a lot of them have metal as well, and there’s not enough metal on them to take them to a metal recycler,” he said.
“And there’s, I guess enough metal where it’s hard to get rid of at the landfill as well. The best way to get rid of it is to properly take it apart.”
Blake said people should know they can’t get away with dumping items illegally and should do the right thing.
“Personally, it drives me crazy to think that people are still in this day and age okay just dumping everything in the backcountry,” he said.
“You know, we have one backcountry. We need to take care of it. As I’ve said many times before, our licence plates say ‘beautiful British Columbia.’ But as you can see, there’s many places that just aren’t beautiful. And people are treating it as a dumping ground.”
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