Daniel Bernard, centre, and Robert Lovelace, right, stood outside city hall Tuesday after earlier staging a protest in Kanata at the site of a proposed residential development. (Kate Porter/CBC)Demonstrators against the development of Ottawa's Beaver Pond Forest vowed to keep fighting Tuesday after two separate protests, but the city said there is little that can done to block the planned development.

KNL, a consortium of developers, is set to clear a 29-hectare section of Kanata’s South March Highlands — which includes two square kilometres of Beaver Pond Forest — to make way for a 3,300 unit subdivision. Crews began cutting on Monday.

The protest began early Tuesday morning when two Algonquin First Nations representatives chained themselves to trees in the Beaver Pond Forest to halt the clearing of the area.

After police warned the men they faced trespassing charges, Robert Lovelace and Daniel Bernard unchained themselves and joined a second protest at city hall, where a small group of protestors had staged a sit-in, in hopes of gaining an audience with mayor Jim Watson.

A small group of people staged a sit-in outside city hall to protest the development of land in the Beaver Pond Forest. (Laurie Fagan/CBC)

The group has maintained that the forest has archeological significance and want the city to stop clear-cutting until the area can be properly assessed. Environmentalists and area residents have also been active in protesting the development, saying it will destroy an important wetland.

But Kanata North councillor Marianne Wilkinson said the city had already done all it could when it agreed on Dec. 15 to a land swap, getting the developer to set aside a small strip of land, through the planned subdivision, to connect it to Trillium Woods.

Wilkinson said the city could not afford the $40 million the developer was asking for the forest and the National Capital Commission was not interested in swapping other land with the developer.

Wilkinson said mayor Jim Watson would not be meeting with the protestors.

"He has said he wouldn't speak with them he has told me he would not call a special meeting," said Wilkinson. "His view is that we dealt with it on the 15th of December and that's the end of it for the city."

Wilkinson also said the provincial Tourism and Cultural Ministry approved the original 2002 archeological study conducted by KNL, and later affirmed that decision in 2010. Ottawa's city council approved the development of the new subdivision seven years ago.

Wilkinson said the most recent provincial assessment came before information from Algonquin groups was delivered to the ministry on Friday, Jan. 28.

"From the city's point of view there is no new information and any new information would have to come from the ministry," she said.