A group of activists snowshoed up Mount Kaaïkop Saturday afternoon in an effort to raise money and awareness for the defence of the Quebec mountain against logging.
Members of the Coalition For the Preservation of Mount Kaaïkop are fighting the Quebec government over its bid to raze part of the forested area on the mountain, which is the second-highest peak in the Laurentians.
“We are against the woodcuts because it would basically disfigure the mountain and the government didn’t want to hear anything about that. For them Mount Kaaïkop is just another forest and they wanted the wood for logging,” says group spokesman Claude Alexandre Carpentier.
The group won an injunction on Jan. 31 to stop the government from allowing cutting down trees, but it says that it’s just a small victory.
In a letter to the media, the group said that the only thing the court’s decision accomplishes is that, instead of allowing the government to start logging right away, it will first have to do a study on the environmental impacts.
Carpentier says that the court proceedings could take up to three years, and that the group has already spent $35,000 in legal fees on the injunction alone.
He says that the Ministry of Natural Resources has refused to work with the group to find a compromise on the future of Mount Kaaïkop.