AN environmental group is asking the courts to test the limits of the province's ban on logging in provincial parks.

The Wilderness Committee has made an application requesting that the Court of Queen's Bench rule on whether the construction of a logging road through a provincial park constitutes logging.

"We feel our interpretation will be upheld as the appropriate interpretation," said Eric Reder, campaign director for the Wilderness Committee.

The Wilderness Committee is contesting the province's decision to issue a license to Tolko to build a 17-kilometre logging road through Grass River Provincial Park in August 2009 -- two months after the province banned all logging in provincial parks.

Grass River Provincial Park is located 75 kilometres north of The Pas, along PTH 39.

Reder said the 2009 ban on logging was the result of a Clean Environment Commission recommendation in 1992 to prohibit all commercial forestry activity in provincial parks. However, the 2009 legislation prohibits only logging, he said.

"The province says that construction of a logging road is not logging," Reder said. "We disagree."

Fred Meier, Manitoba's deputy minister of conservation, said the application to build the road went through a public review process, adding the construction is consistent with all regulations and legislation prohibiting commercial logging activity in the park.

"This is not commercial logging inside a provincial park -- that's banned," Meier said.

The Wilderness Committee said the province gave Tolko final approval in February and construction of the road began in a remote section of the park in March. Work on the road stopped in April. According to Reder, the environmental licence requires construction to stop between March 31 and July 15.

Reder expects the court to set a date for a hearing in a couple of weeks.