Yesterday we brought you the story of Petillo the land activist versus Pinelo the forestry officer.
The activist says that there are illegal loggers in Sagana Heights that the Forestry Department is turning a blind eye to. The Deputy Chief Forestry Officer says that they found no evidence of illegal logging, and that Petillo is falsely accusing them of being complicit.
It's two very different sides to the same story, and each side says the other is lying. After John Pinelo's interview with us, Petillo decided to take to social media again to prove his claims. Courtney Menzies has this story.
Nigel Petillo is calling out the Forestry Department yet again because he says he's being misrepresented.
Yesterday, Chief Deputy Forest Officer John Pinelo explained that they found no evidence of illegal logging within Sagana Heights,
John Pinelo, Deputy Chief Forest Officer
"We drove in and we found no evidence of anybody with heavy duty equipment driving in that area."
Pinelo says that showed Petillo their findings, to which he agreed.
But Petillo says that Pinelo never reached out to him and that he never conceded to Forestry's conclusions.
Voice of: Nigel Petillo, Land Activist
"The police went there, Forestry went there, they said they saw evidence of people coming through, yes they probably didn't see big logging taking place. A lot of stick have been removed. Regardless, stick logging, it doesn't matter, nobody gave anybody permission to go there and do that. The road is evident that there's somebody patrolling the place, taking stuff out of here. Their drones show other roads being built in the area, or not built but pushed through with tractors because they are trying to access other lands behind us then the man said he contacted me to make a clarification, that's a lie too. He's supposed to prove that by phone, show a message or text or a call to me after the fact, that is all lies."
And Petillo took to social media again this morning to prove his allegations:
Nigel Petillo, Land Activist
"I'm taking this video to put on record that these people are here almost everyday, they take truckloads of material, I told them not to come back, if they come back we'll have problems. They are destroying the the roads I fixed here."
"This road here, they just drive in and destroy the whole road, nobody cares about that."
"All these sticks here, when this was happening, I followed that blue dump truck that came from Yemeriville, I saw all these sticks being unloaded, at least a good amount of them, in fact let me show you what's happening here. I don't know if this is legal or what but the size of these sticks here. Some of the size of these sticks is really ridiculous. Look at that, that's my finger on one of them, compared to some of them, and the amount of stick that are here, see how ridiculous this. I'm sure the authorities saw this, I don't know if they did anything about it or if they even care."
"I'm being targeted now by those same officials from the government claiming that no logging is going on, when countrywide we know this is what is taking place."
But when we reached out to Pinelo, he said that he doesn't want to get into a back and forth with Petillo. However, he explained that the area in Petillo's video is not Sagana Heights, and it is not where Petillo took the Forest Officers. Rather, that area is closer to Santander's sugarcane fields. He also added that those lands are also private property, and it is up to the landowners to secure it. Finally, he said that the Forestry Department will still assist Petillo if he chooses to reach out.
End of story? For the time being let's hope so.
