Region Archives: Canada West

The West Kelowna Glenrosa Residents Association is lobbying for more fire prevention and is suggesting ideas for two of the community’s largest problems. The association has written to city hall asking that a fire break be constructed around the city. …“It seems like every year, we’re fighting these fires, they pop up, and it’s a reactive situation, not proactive,” association president Jared Franczak says the association feels more could be done to protect the city from wildfires. said. The City of Whitehorse in the Yukon is in the process of building a massive fuel break around the city, but it’s not a strategy being adopted in B.C. for a number of reasons. The BC Wildfire Service says that while fuel breaks are used in battling active fires, they are not “a permanent feature we want on the landscape.”

David Eby

Meta has agreed to amplify the B.C. government’s emergency evacuation information in exchange for a promise to better respond to harmful content that appears on its platforms including non-consensual images. Premier David Eby announced the deal on Wednesday. “Meta has agreed to establish a direct line of communication that will ensure response measures are closely co-ordinated as part of the government’s wildfire safety efforts, including the dissemination of reputable information available from official sources,” said Eby in a joint statement with representatives from five companies. “Meta, Snap, TikTok and X have offered to provide the province and additional crisis response organizations with advertising support to amplify awareness of safety resources throughout the wildfire season,” the joint statement said. The deal is for Meta to amplify “official information” from the government in emergency situations but it doesn’t address the fact that Meta continues to block Canadian news sites.

WINNIPEG — The Honourable Harjit Sajjan, President of the King’s Privy Council for Canada, Minister of Emergency Preparedness and Minister responsible for the Pacific Economic Development Agency of Canada announced the investment of $38.4 million over four years under the Government of Canada’s Fighting and Managing Wildfires in a Changing Climate Program – Equipment Fund to support Manitoba’s efforts to purchase wildland firefighting equipment to enhance provincial readiness and capacity to prepare for and respond to wildland fires. Funding announced today will help Manitoba purchase and upgrade firefighting equipment to increase wildland fire preparedness and response efforts, improve safety for communities and firefighters alike, and strengthen capacities and capabilities for resource exchange across Canada. In addition, the funding will support the purchase of additional training equipment.

Additional coverage from CBC News: Feds give Manitoba $19.2M to boost wildfire fighting capacity, province matches for $38.4M total

Nanaimo, BC — The Private Forest Landowners Association (PFLA) is proud to announce the agenda for the 2024 Conference and Field Tour on June 6-7 2024 at Bear Mountain Resort in Victoria, BC. The annual event brings together private managed forest landowners, elected officials and guests for an opportunity to explore innovative approaches to sustainable forest management. The 2024 Conference theme, Beyond Borders: Collaborating For Success, sets the stage for an information-filled two-day event. The Field Tour on June 6 features an onsite visit to a private managed forest landowners’ property, a tour of Arbutus Grove Seed Orchard, and discussion about seed genetics at the Mount Newton Seed Orchard. The Conference on June 7 includes Keynote Speaker, Minister of Forests Bruce Ralston, as well as panel presentations on Fuel Management for Wildfire Mitigation, and Showcasing Innovation on Private Forest Land.

Doug Donaldson

Andrea Barnett

Oliver Brandes

…In B.C., the wildfire challenge continues to outpace the current suite of solutions, while ecological and social impacts worsen year after year. Unless we dig in now, there won’t be enough resources to the get the job done right and it will only get harder. In a recent report, we investigated the current state of wildfire prevention, mitigation, response, and recovery in the province. Based on our findings, we offer direction on where to get started and what to prioritize. Resilience — the capacity to deal with change and continue to develop — will be vital. …B.C. needs to adopt a whole-of-society approach to advance wildfire resilience. No one government has all the knowledge, resources, or authority to do it alone. …What we do today will be the best insurance against what will certainly be more dangerous fires tomorrow.

The Nakusp and Area Community Forest (NACFOR) open house had a strong turnout. Project information was on display, and staff and directors were available to answer questions. Operating since 2008, NACFOR is 100 per cent owned by the Village of Nakusp, allowing the community to benefit from forestry operations. NACFOR has been managed under contract by Cabin Resource Management for the past year. “Community forestry is a very direct reflection of our goal as foresters to uphold the public interest,” said Mike Crone, NACFOR project manager. “I’ve enjoyed zooming in scale-wise to such a small land base and really getting to know everything that’s going on. “But at the same time, the scope is way wider than what you get to do in regular forestry. “You get to do a bunch of everything, and get super involved in the community while doing it, which is exciting.”

Local government representatives have asked B.C.’s ministers of forests and emergency management to keep forest service roads passable in the event of wildfires, while the province says it is identifying such roads that can be brought up to par in emergencies. Bruce Ralston, minister of forests, and Bowinn Ma, B.C.’s emergency management minister, addressed attendees by video at the Southern Interior Local Government Association conference in Kamloops earlier this month. The ministers were asked if they would commit to ensuring forest service roads and other egress routes are passable in the event of an evacuation. Stephen Karpuk, SILGA delegate and Kamloops city councillor, told Castanet Kamloops there needs to be an effort to use heavy duty machinery during a wildfire or while preparing for an emergency, to keep the backroads passable for all vehicles.

FORT NELSON, BC — Sonja Leverkus and her crew are based in Fort Nelson, B.C., which is currently at the centre of several big, fast-moving wildfires. This season, they had to switch gears from putting out zombie fires that burned through the winter to help battle the massive Parker Lake wildfire. That wildfire, which started when high winds blew a tree onto a power line, forced an evacuation order for about 4,700 people, including the community as well as Fort Nelson First Nation in B.C.’s northeast. …Federal scientists and politicians weighed in with their predictions last week for another hot, dry summer — the “perfect conditions for intense wildfires,” said Minister Jonathan Wilkinson. …Timothy Caulfield says wildfires are increasingly used as an “opportunity to push an anti-climate change”. He worries this season might be even worse when you factor in the growing role of artificial intelligence in spreading misinformation.

COLD LAKE – The Government of Alberta, with industry stakeholders, is supporting caribou recovery while promoting sustainable development in the Cold Lake region – and seeking public feedback. Alberta has invested more than $30.2 million in the caribou habitat restoration program since 2018, which includes $30.2 million in provincial funding and $700,000 from industry. Budget 2022 included a commitment of $10 million per year for caribou habitat recovery, starting in 2023-24. The Government of Alberta says it is still waiting for a meaningful federal contribution to support the province’s caribou habitat restoration program. Julia Pickering, Assistant Director of Communications and Public Engagement for the Government of Alberta, emphasized the importance of implementing the approved Cold Lake and Bistcho Lake Sub-regional Plans to achieve the goals of caribou recovery. She clarified that the recently proposed regulations align with the existing sub-regional plans, emphasizing continuity in objectives and strategies. 

It’s no secret that British Columbia’s forestry industry is a massive economic driver for the province. According to the BC Council of Forest Industries (COFI), forestry contributes $17.4 billion to BC’s gross domestic product and creates around 100,000 good-paying jobs, both direct and indirect. However, that is obviously a living number from year to year, and in 2023 that figure dropped to 90,000, according to COFI’s economic impact study published in April. That’s 10,000 jobs lost in 2023 alone, with half of them being direct and the other half being indirect or induced. Those job losses are coming as BC’s harvest levels are declining, from 50 million cubic metres of forest in 2021 down to 43 million in 2022 and 35 million in 2023.

Rick Campbell

LYTTON, BC — After fuelling up their drip torches, BC Wildfire Service workers wearing red jackets begin to lay fire to an area of dry forest ground in Nlaka’pamux territory. …The project was designed to help build on the Nlaka’pamux community’s knowledge of fire and the ecosystem, as well as to improve their confidence in mitigating wildfires. Fifteen BCWS members trained six young contract firefighters from Boothroyd on how to conduct a prescribed burn. The community itself has an extensive and long history of conducting their own cultural burns. Their wildfire mitigation treatment consists of trimming trees, removing debris, piling it all together and burning. Elder and former band Chief Rick Campbell estimated that the practice of cultural and prescribed burns hasn’t been done in some areas throughout the nation for at least 500 years. “I think it’s long overdue,” he said.

The provincial government is set to enact a ban on open fires across coastal B.C. on Friday. BC Wildfire Service says, effective at 12 p.m. on May 17, most open burning activities will be prohibited everywhere from the Sunshine Coast, Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii until the end of October. The BC Wildfire Service says the ban will limit “Category 2” and “Category 3” open fires to help reduce wildfire risk and protect public safety. That means no larger fires, fireworks, or things like sky lanterns will be allowed. But it doesn’t apply to small campfires that are a half metre high by a half metre wide or smaller. The ban applies to all public and private land.

Mount Currie, B.C. – Líl̓wat Forestry Ventures Ltd., the forestry division of Líl̓wat Nation, has begun a proactive wildfire risk reduction initiative or ‘Forest Fuels Management Project’. The project is being conducted in collaboration with Líl̓wat Nation FireSmart in a residential subdivision above X-Stream Road. The work will involve the careful thinning of trees in a heavily forested 50-hectare area, plus working together with residents on what they want to see done within 30 to 50 metres of their homes. Klay Tindall, general manager of Líl̓wat Forestry Ventures Ltd., emphasized the importance of this selective thinning work to create a more resilient and healthier forest environment, and FireSmart to better protect homes.

Doug Donaldson

Former B.C. forests minister Doug Donaldson says the province is on the right track as it responds to worsening wildfires, but the scale of the challenge is so great, it’s falling behind and needs to prioritize a “whole-of-society” approach. Donaldson says the place to start should be a dedicated provincial wildfire strategy that lays out responsibilities for each government ministry, while supporting the participation of local communities, civil society and the forest industry. Donaldson says the B.C. Wildfire Service has a strategy but it’s about a decade old. He says it needs to be updated and elevated into a cross-ministry strategy. …Donaldson is the co-author of a new report released Tuesday from a wildfire-focused research group based at the University of Victoria. …Donaldson says B.C. needs to look at “innovative economic models” to reduce forest fuels. That means involving the forest industry, he said. One example could be the reintroduction of broadcast burning.

Additional coverage from Black Press: U of Victoria report sets actions, priorities for wildfire management