West Vancouver police arrested 23 protesters on Thursday morning at the Eagleridge Bluffs tent city that went up more than a month ago.

They were the people who decided to stay and be arrested after Staff-Sgt Jim Almas read aloud both the court injunction ordering them to leave and the subsequent enforcement order.



Some of the Eagleridge protesters put down
their signs and left when police moved in and
threatened to arrest them Thursday. (CBC)
There were about 70 people at the site at the time, and most of them walked away across the existing highway when he finished.

Police say those arrested will face possible civil charges for violating the court order.

Earlier in the morning, the leader of the protest said he was looking forward to the arrests.

"If this is going down today, we want it to be memorable. So I'm hopeful that it is going to be a media circus," said Dennis Perry, who heads the Coalition to Save Eagleridge Bluffs.

The Eagleridge tent city went up in April, in an effort to stop the construction of a new section of the Sea to Sky Highway through the rock bluffs in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

They say the highway project would destroy a sensitive wetland.

The protesters want the provincial government to build a tunnel through the area of multimillion-dollar homes instead of logging and blasting through the bluffs. But the government has refused, saying it would cost too much.

The contractor went to B.C. Supreme Court earlier this month, seeking and obtaining an injunction ordering the protesters to move out to allow his crews to begin work.

But the campers refused to leave, and appealed the decision, unsuccessfully.

The contractor then returned to court and obtained an enforcement order, which is being carried out at the protest site on Thursday.