Monthly Archives: August 2018

As wildfires continue to take a toll across the province, locals near Quesnel are still dealing with the aftermath of this spring’s flood waters. Several stretches of West Fraser Road, at and near the Narcosli Bridge washed out in April and May 2018, due to high water levels from the spring freshet. West Fraser Road, which travels south from Quesnel towards Williams Lake, has been closed since then, and the BC Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure notified ?Esdilagh First Nation (Alexandria) that construction on West Fraser Road won’t begin until summer 2020. …In the meantime, residents of communities south of the washouts are on detour to and from Quesnel, forced to drive Garner Road, a winding forest service road, to reach the city where they work, attend school and shop.

Chris Elden

The smell of fresh-cut balsam fir is a tough one to beat. Standing among recently harvested trees on a property near Ten Mile Lake, the air is thick with the aroma, along with the many mosquitos a piece of machinery has disturbed from their resting places. Chris Elden, a local forester by trade, is logging around 50 of his 140 acre lot in the hills behind Parkland Elementary School. But aside from the noise of the machinery, from the road you’d never know there was a logging operation going on in this dense patch of forest. That’s because Elden has employed a contractor who is relatively new to Quesnel and is using a unique system to thin out the forest without creating a great clear-cut scar in the countryside.

This year’s wildfire season is now the second-worst in B.C. history when it comes to the amount of land that’s burned. More than 945,000 hectares have been scorched by fires since April 1. Last year, the record was set when more than 1.2 million hectares of land were destroyed by wildfire. The new total means B.C. has gone back to back with its most destructive summers of fire. As of Friday, more than 550 fires were burning across the province. Sixty are considered fires of note, meaning they threaten people or property or are highly visible. Most of the notable fires are in the province’s southeast, northwest and Interior regions. Nearly 5,000 people had been forced from their homes due to wildfire as of Thursday afternoon. Another 22,000 were under evacuation alerts.

For the second year running, British Columbians are getting a taste of what the “new normal” means — air so choked with the smoke of burning forest fires that it drives us to stay indoors. But what many of us may fail to appreciate is what the new normal means for our forests and the management challenges lying ahead. How have ferocious fires, increased insect attacks, anomalous disease outbreaks and all the heightened logging activities in response to such events diminished our forests? How do we responsibly manage our forests moving forward, keeping in mind that we need them for clean water, grizzly bears and spawning salmon alike, and as a source of timber? Months before this summer’s conflagration, B.C.’s forests minister, Doug Donaldson, announced that the province’s “forest-inventory” program would be reviewed by a panel of outside professionals, a process that now nears completion.

Four forest fires burning in northwestern British Columbia merged this week, forming an enormous, 118,000-hectare blaze. In Ontario, officials only recently declared the massive “Parry Sound 33” forest fire under control after a month of burning. …The fires have put climate change at the fore of public discussion in Canada, while forest management has taken a backseat. And yet, explains Verena Griess, a professor in forest management at UBC, if we did more to manage our forests, we could help reduce the risk of a fire. “Forests in B.C. are not really managed,” says Griess, comparing the western province with her past experience as a forester in Europe. …Griess doesn’t want to call it mismanagement, but she does think we need to rethink the process. …Thanks to forest fires and the devastation wrought by the mountain pine beetle, Griess thinks those conversations are actually starting to happen.

The iconic South Okanagan mountain goats have been dwindling in numbers for decades, but according to conservation workers, wildfires in the area are actually good news for those populations.  Jesse Zeman, director of the BCWF Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program, said some of the fires currently in the south are covering areas that could help existing populations, or be rejuvenated into ideal goat territory. “Those are spots where historically, back in the 80s, they would have found goats in the area and where we no longer see them,” he said.  Zeman drew x-marks on a goat map from that time, indicating which populations are no longer around today. He said the decline has a lot to do with man-made disturbances in the natural fire cycle.

A land use plan for rural Salmo has been adopted by the Regional District of Central Kootenay board, without a controversial section that has been deferred to a later date. Section 18 of the Area G land use bylaw is an attempt to regulate private land logging, but needs more work, says the area’s representative, Hans Cunningham. “The basic idea of having some control over private land logging is good,” Cunningham told the Star, “but we… will deal with it separately, and have a public hearing to include it in the bylaw.”…John Dooley, who works for the Interior Lumber Manufacturers’ Association, told the Star the organization raised concerns about some details of the private logging section and the fact it appeared at the last minute in the process. “The real issue for most people,” Dooley said, “was that there was very little consultation with the industry. In fact there was none.