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Kelowna News  

Okanagan Forest Task Force searches for owner of abandoned trailer

Recognize this trailer?

Kane Blake's work with the Okanagan Forest Task Force never seems to end.

Blake and his members cleaned up a trailer that had been abandoned for three years on the Fowler Creek Forest Service Road earlier this month.

Now he's looking for the owner of an abandoned trailer in the hills above Lake Country.

"Before anyone asks we looked and the vehicle identification number tag was removed. No, I won't give its location because I don't want people (to) try to take parts and make a bigger mess."

Blake says this is the first time he's spotted this trailer but he says it's tucked away and is slowly being dismantled. He's hopeful the owner will do the right thing and remove the trailer themselves.

"It definitely looks like it's very recently been put in there, judging by the marks of it, and where it is now."

Blake says if the owner doesn't come forward his team at OFTF will step in and tow the trailer out.

"What are the chances someone recognizes this travel trailer dumped deep in the hills above Lake Country. It would be awesome to see this person have to clean up their own mess and not make us do it."

This year alone OFTF has removed almost 300,000 pounds of garbage and wrecked vehicles and abandoned trailers out of the backcountry.

"It would be awesome to start having people held accountable and having to clean up their own garbage. So if you recognize this trailer from a driveway or know where it might have come from please send me a message," Blake said.

One of the reasons Blake says he finds so many abandoned trailers and RV's in the backcountry is because it is costly to recycle them.

"Unlike vehicles, where, when you buy them, there's a place you can take them, at the end of their life, they go to a crusher or an auto wrecker, travel trailers, don't have a place to go, and that's why we find so many in the backcountry. Same with truck campers. There's nowhere to take them. There's too much garbage."



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