B.C. outdoor advocate assures camping conflicts rare despite recent violent encounters

VICTORIA (NEWS 1130) – Despite two incidents involving aggressive, threatening behaviour at Fraser Valley campsites, an outdoor advocate assures these situations are extremely rare.

However, with more people heading into the outdoors and with remote sites also getting busier, there are calls for people to have patience with one another.

If you want to have a space to yourself, camping enthusiast Steven Jones says you need to leave earlier or drive farther.

“You shouldn’t expect that you can head out Friday afternoon and go to the first spot and that you’re going to find peace and quiet and that no one is going to join you,” he explained. However, he says fortunately there are few serious conflicts.

“There’s a very small number of bad apples that we don’t want to ruin it for the rest of us so we just need some enforcement,” Jones told NEWS 1130.


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Over the May long weekend, police received two separate reports of people being forced out of campsites by others acting threateningly or aggressively. In one situation, police say they were called to reports of a family at Chehalis Lake who said others nearby shot a pellet gun in their direction, a machete was pulled out, and a female was assaulted, before they were told to leave.

That same weekend, a woman took to social media to share images of people she claimed threatened her and her friends, all in an effort to get them to leave their campsite at West Harrison Lake.

Patrols stepped up

Police said in a release Tuesday that they were stepping up patrols in recreation areas. Solicitor General Mike Farnworth confirmed on Wednesday that enforcement has been stepped up this year across the province.

“We have hired additional conservation officers in this province. RCMP are also on patrol in areas right around the province, not just in communities but in rural parts of British Columbia,” he said.

“Nobody should be subject to that when they are in the back country, at a campsite or anywhere for that matter when they are,” Farnworth said of the recent incidents from the eastern Fraser Valley, adding what he heard was “absolutely disgusting and outrageous behaviour and abuse.”

-With files from Monika Gul, Mike Lloyd, and Hana Mae Nassar

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