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 This is a scene many campers in the NWT will soon have to get to use to -- campfire logs by the bag at several dollars a pop. - Mike W. Bryant/NNSL photo |
Within the next 10 days, campers -- with exception of those camped at territorial parks in the South Slave -- will have to pay for firewood.
The reason, according to Phil Lee, the parks department's North Slave regional superintendent, is that too much of the wood was going home with campers.
"Twenty-five per cent of firewood goes home in the backs of trucks," said Lee. "We put firewood into the box, campers load up the box of their trucks and what they don't burn, goes home."
Firewood costs his department more than $100,000 a year.
All that's needed to start charging for wood is for the rates to be signed off by the minister of Renewable Resources, Wildlife, and Economic Development, Jim Antoine. That's expected to happen soon.
Once that's done, campers will be able to purchase 10-kilogram bundles of wood from the park operator.
Each bundle will include six to eight "decent sized pieces of wood."
Lee wouldn't say how much each bundle would cost but said it would be "less than market rate."
"I don't expect you'll see huge bonfires and big stacks of firewood beside campfires any more."
Pauline Sundberg, who owns a home a short distance from Prelude Lake Park near Yellowknife, watched a couple on the Victoria Day weekend clear out a wood bin only to return to their campsite that already had an ample supply of wood stashed by their camper-trailer.
"I just thought, 'What an abuse,'" said Sundberg.
"You're offered something free, and now this weekend supposedly everybody is going to start paying for it. It just kind of ticked me off."
Gerd Fricke, manager of parks and tourism for the Deh Cho region, said territorial parks there will still be giving out an initial allotment of free wood.
But after that it will cost $5 a bag.
"We haven't had that big of a problem in this region but I know around Yellowknife it has been a problem," said Fricke.
"When I was up there we had to get people to unload their trucks all the time."
