Bevin McNelly is fed up.
“Every weekend it’s bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang … it’s ridiculous that they’re allowed to come out here and do that,” he said, referring to the shooters that often use the Crown land in the eastern part of Westlock County, where the May 12-13 Echo Lake wildfire torched more than 250 hectares.
The cause of the fire is still being investigated and most of the remaining hotspots have been extinguished.
The 45 provincial firefighters that were called to the scene last week have now been released and Range Road 235A between Township Roads 592A and 594A is reopened as of May 17, but a county fire ban remains in place and the municipality is asking people to stay away from the area.
Last week, county officials were working with the theory that the fire may have been caused by shooters.
McNelly is clear in what he’d like to see happen.
He isn’t in favour of a permanent shooting ban, but during the dry season, in the spring, he’s all for it. He’s been dealing with fires near his home for the past 15 years, he said.
“It’s very frustrating and it’s time now that something has to be done here. The entire area has to be shut down to fires, for quadders and for shooters during that dry spell every spring.”
McNelly brought his concerns to county council several years ago, but feels nothing has been done.
“I started this five years ago because the county told me they can’t do anything on Crown land, they’ve got no authority on Crown lands so I started looking into it and made a couple phone calls and they told me that’s not right. The county has complete control of Crown land under certain circumstances and I think that it being dry with the fire bans, or restrictions on, it would fall under those circumstances,” he said.
McNelly added he has recently spoken to both county administration and Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock MLA Glenn van Dijken, but still isn’t sure he’s being heard. McNelly said van Dijken has taken his concerns to the environment minister and he awaits any news coming out of that.
“It’s mind-boggling, our county politicians, our provincial politicians, basically sit on their hands. If every spring they had to deal with a fire, they would be jumping pretty fast to get something done.”
It’s no exaggeration when McNelly says it happens every year. Going back through Westlock News archives, one can see there is a clear pattern of fires in the area, around the same time every year.
“These quadders that come out here and the shooters have got no respect,” said McNelly, later clarifying that many are respectful, but he estimated 10-20 per cent have no consideration for the land or area residents.
“They come out here from Edmonton and surrounding area and they just rip and tear and they don’t care. They start their bonfires, they throw their cigarette butts out, then they come out here and they’re shooting these bombs off and it shakes the house.”
In June 2015 the plot of land was locked up by the province and things seemed to be getting better for residents in the area with only a few random gunshots to be heard in the distance, but that soon changed when the lock down ended.
Since then, there has been little done to curb the noise and traffic experienced in the area.
“Our county has to step up first and our provincial government has to start stepping up too. If they want to own this land they better take care of it,” said McNelly.
Heath Bowen calls himself a responsible shooter. He lives in Edmonton and has been shooting on the Crown land for about the last 18 months.
Depending on the weather and work schedules, he says he and a few friends could be out there every weekend at times, even during the winter. There have been times when more than a dozen other people have showed up for target practice as well.
“We like it because it’s only a 45-minute drive for us to get there,” he said, noting he was planning on clay shooting the weekend of the fire and spoke to firefighters on the scene.
Bowen initially found it hard to believe that shooting could have started the fire.
“Given how the winds were going and where it was burned, I’ve never known anybody to shoot from where it would have started. It started north of where most people shoot,” he said.
However, after visiting the site again last week he said, “It looks like it may have started in a spot where people shoot.”
He admits the site is abused by others.
“Sometimes there’s shells, sometimes there’s garbage ... We’ve gone in there and spent two or three hours just cleaning up before shooting,” said Bowen, adding they’ve come out with two large garbage pails full of mostly shotgun shells. Another time they left with 20 pounds of brass, he said.
He also has plans to bring a trailer out to the site to clean it up even further.
Bowen is imploring county council and the province not to restrict shooting in the area.
“You need to have somewhere that people can legally shoot, otherwise they start doing it illegally. There has to be a happy medium.”
“We know it’s on the government’s radar, we just hope it doesn’t go away,” he said.
“I don’t want to shut it down,” said McNelly. “I just don’t want to have to worry about a fire every spring.”
