In February 2025, BC’s Ministry of Forests announced logging is on hold for until September 2026 at Fairy Creek, site of Canada’s largest forest civil-disobedience campaign.
The same day, the forest minister reported that trees at Fairy Creek had been spiked. The minister said an MoF office and a Forest Service office received photographs of metal spikes driven into trees. Spikes are oversized nails more than 10 cm long that can break chainsaws and sawmill blades and render the trees unusable. No one has claimed responsibility for the act.
In 2020 and 2021, more than 1100 people were arrested for blocking logging roads and violating court injunctions at Fairy Creek, near Port Renfrew, BC. The province’s deferral temporarily halted logging starting in June 2021, after the Huu-ay-aht, Ditidaht, and Pacheedaht First Nations declared their intention to take back control of their traditional territories. The province also deferred logging in ten other old-growth forests across the province, with the stated goals of conservation and reconciliation.
Kathy Code of Friends of Fairy Creek Society called reports of tree-spiking “unsubstantiated claims from an unknown sender,” adding that Fairy Creek forest defenders would not have spiked the trees because “such an act is against our code of conduct.”
While spikes have been reported in a dozen contested logging sites in BC, no one has ever been charged with the crime, and no one in Canada has been injured by an illegal spike.
In 2022, Teal Jones, the company responsible for cutting and milling Fairy Creek’s trees, reported on its blog that sawmill workers found spikes in trees logged at Fairy Creek. Despite taking steps to detect and remove spiked logs, one made it into the mill and destroyed an expensive saw blade. The blog noted that unknown individuals also blocked culverts, damaged roads, sabotaged helicopter landing pads, and vandalized equipment.
Between 2021 and 2023, anonymous Fairy Creek supporters published and distributed four issues of Creeker, a zine and website with graphics and descriptions of sabotage, tree spiking, and other militant tactics.
Forest Minister Ravi Parmar denounced the spikes, saying, “I just can’t imagine someone who would have the will to go and spike a tree with the intention of hurting a forestry worker, let alone possibly even killing a worker.”
While spikes have been reported in a dozen contested logging sites in BC, no one has ever been charged with the crime, and no one in Canada has been injured by an illegal spike. The forest industry is, however, extremely dangerous for workers. According to the BC Forest Safety Council, WorkSafe BC’s most recent report shows 275 fatal accidents between January 1999 and May 2020.
Captain Paul Watson promoted tree-spiking in the 1980s with well-advertised workshops and press releases. He says an anonymous group spiked more than 20,000 trees in areas slated for logging on North Vancouver’s Grouse Mountain and elsewhere on the coast. Watson, founder of Sea Shepherd Society and the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, calls the act, “preventive medicine. It is the inoculation of a tree against the disease of logging.” He notes the spiked trees are still standing.
Meanwhile, Teal Jones continues its battle with insolvency. Its court-appointed monitor, PricewaterhouseCoopers, abruptly resigned in November 2024, and a new monitor, Ernst Young, has taken its place. The court has given Teal Jones until the end of June 2025 to get its affairs in order. The company is struggling to restructure in the face of liens, lawsuits, trade wars, and the prospect of major losses across the Canadian lumber sector.
