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Spine Trail is envisioned as a global tourist attraction similar to Spain’s famed Camino de Santiago or the Appalachian Trail that stretches up the eastern United States from Georgia to Maine.

But that vision is in peril. The route is blocked in five locations where it must pass through lands owned by a handful of forest companies, according to VISTA.

Such disputes, moreover, are becoming increasingly common across B.C.

FISHING LAKES

Public access to wilderness, hunting areas and fishing lakes has been eroded for decades by private land owners who erect fences and gates to keep the public out, according to a white paper prepared by the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Victoria.

The Freshwater Fisheries Society of B.C. has stopped stocking 30 lakes with fish — many of them on Crown land — because anglers can no longer get access to them, says society president Ken Sawayma. Jarvis and Weekes Lakes near Sooke and Timberland, Crystal and MacKay Lakes near Cassidy were used regularly by anglers, until road access was gated.

When locks appeared on access roads to popular fishing lakes on the Douglas Lake Ranch in the late 1980s, it touched off a dispute that smoulders to this day. In the Christian and Peace valleys, private landowners have placed barriers across public access roads that run through private land, according to the B.C. Wildlife Federation.

Island Timberlands charges fees for access to land used by hikers to get to Mt. Arrowsmith near Port Alberni, according to the white paper.