Region Archives: Canada West

Alberta’s wildfire season has been taxing on several communities, but they’re having some positive impact on the province’s mountain pine beetle population. Nadir Erbilgin, a professor of forest health and the department chair of renewable resources in the faculty of agriculture at the University of Alberta, said that in order for wildfires to eliminate pine beetles they have to fully burn the trees that they are infesting. “When you burn the trees, you’re burning the insects under the bark, when the fire kills the tree it is no use to the beetles because they rely on the fresh source under the bark and it becomes charcoal so they cannot use it,” said Erbilgin. “The population is significantly declining.” …Erbilgin said that management activities and the province’s push to get rid of the beetles through burning and tree cutting are a huge contributing factor to the decline of the beetle alongside the colder weather.

In the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, Jason Fisher nailed the flesh of a beaver carcass to a tree. The bait set, he unspooled several metres of barbed wire, wrapping it loosely around the trunk to snag a fur sample for later testing..  …A wildlife biologist from the University of Victoria, Fisher had come to the B.C.-Alberta border to find wolverines. …“As the climate warms, wolverine range is contracting,” said Fisher. “In Kananaskis Country, the Golden area, you used to find wolverines. You don’t anymore.” …It’s one reason the biologist says wolverines are getting spotted in communities far out into Alberta’s prairie, he says. “Their backs are against the wall,” said Fisher. “They push into the prairies and are never heard from again. They’re just starving out.” …The planet’s changing climate is projected to unravel the natural balance as we know it — from the planet’s biggest to its smallest creatures.

Mike Morris

Since 2013, Mike Morris has served as an MLA with the BC Liberal Party (BC United) for the Prince George – Mackenzie riding. …Mike believes volume-based logging must end and that an ecological approach to forest harvesting is the only way forward. He wants to see forestry practices focus on forest health, climate change and ecosystem restoration so that wildlife can thrive and mills can continue to operate. …Mike’s wildlife advocacy work from within the government is coming to an end soon. He will not be running in the likely 2024 election, and instead, he hopes to “turn into a grizzled old trapper granddad and go trapping and take my grandkids out.” Free of the constraints that come with being an elected official, Mike may still continue to push for forestry reform and wildlife protection.

Small scale forestry in British Columbia is growing as a platform to integrate community, climate, and forest values. This policy brief highlights critical constraints facing small forest tenures and the need for engagement on long-term solutions that allow for locally driven management decisions. The intention to Modernize Forest Policy in BC creates an opportunity to break long-standing constraints facing small-scale forestry, reconsidering how forest stewardship priorities are regulated for diverse and local values. A long-term vision for small local forestry in British Columbia that creates enabling conditions for diverse and locally appropriate forest management is currently missing from BC forest policy. Small tenure holders seek greater autonomy, expanded revenue options, and improved opportunities for innovation and more diverse fibre utilization. Creating a more inclusive forest sector will require transformative policy change and local initiatives that promote diversity in tenure, management, and stewardship.

British Columbia is putting out a call for national and international help to fight wildfires that are blanketing communities in thick smoke, as some residents watch flames approach their homes. The province had requested 1,000 additional foreign firefighters to join 160 from Mexico and the United States already in B.C., said Bowinn Ma, minister of emergency management and climate readiness. Ma also formally requested more federal resources from her counterpart in Ottawa, Bill Blair, to help fight the 350 or so fires burning across B.C. She said at a briefing about drought conditions in B.C. on Thursday that an “incident management team” from Australia is arriving on Saturday. Firefighters from South Korea, France, South Africa and the Dominican Republic have also been fighting fires in Canada, during what is shaping up as a record-breaking fire season. …Blair said Ottawa is ready to deploy resources.

Doug Donaldson

The trifecta of managing forests primarily for timber values, the shifting climate, and changing settlement patterns has created a triple-threat on the ground. …We have the largest single wildfire in colonial B.C. history burning in the northeast, with the usually highest-threat season still weeks away. …With the 2017, 2018 and 2021 catastrophic wildfire seasons barely in the rear-view mirror, this season is on track to be another record breaker. …one route to a better future when it comes to wildfires in B.C. is the multi-lane path laid out in June by the Forest Practices Board. …The board calls for an overarching approach with wildfire at its centre, citing hard-hit California’s wildfire and forest resilience action plan as an example. B.C. is different from California yet the scale of the wildfire challenge we face compels actions on a similar scale. This involves a “whole of society” approach where senior governments (provincial, Indigenous, federal), communities, industry and civil society are pulling for a common goal. It’s time. The wildfires demand it.

FORT ST. JAMES – An audit of the BC Timber Sales Program (BCTS) and timber sale licensees in the Fort St James field unit portion of the BCTS Stuart-Nechako Business Area found significant issues with bridge documentation, as well as unsound practices related to terrain stability assessments and soil disturbance. The Forest Practices Board (FPB) conducted the full-scope compliance audit of all BCTS and timber sale licence (TSL) holders’ forestry activities between June 1, 2021, and June 24, 2022. The audit found that one TSL holder had installed three bridges on fish streams without preparing and retaining all the required documentation. “The Forest Planning and Practices Regulation is specific about the documentation required for bridge construction. This is to ensure bridges are installed soundly and streams adequately protected,” said Rick Monchak, an FPB board member. “In this case, the licensee did not provide the legally required documents, and as the bridges were removed prior to the field inspection.”

Rosalea Pagani

Before competing in her first Powell River Logger Sports event in 2016, Rosalea Pagani, a local forestry worker with deep roots in the community, hadn’t heard of logger sports. Throwing an axe and sawing through logs for sport had never crossed her mind, until she was approached by Powell River Logger Sports board president Bob Marquis. Pagani was working for BC Ministry of Forests at the time while Marquis was one of the road building contractors. …Marquis invited Pagani that evening to practice and learn how to throw an axe. Three days later she was competing in her first logger sports event. That year was the first logger sports event Powell River had hosted in 11 years. “There were no women competing and [Marquis] wanted some local females from Powell River in the competition,” said Pagani. …The logger sports event is this weekend, July 15-16, at Loggers Memorial Bowl at Willingdon Beach. Carvers will start Friday, July 14.

Midway, BC — efforts are being made by the West Boundary Community Forest (WBCF) to better safeguard nearby communities from the potential dangers posed by wildfires. With the infusion of new grant funding from the Forest Enhancement Society of BC, the WBCF has made significant progress to reduce the risk of wildfires in the area. Last year, WBCF received a grant of just over $1.1 million from FESBC. With this funding, the WBCF has taken proactive measures to enhance the safety of the communities of Midway, Greenwood, Grand Forks, Rock Creek, and Westbridge by working to mitigate the risk of wildfires. “Sustainable community forest management is critical to reducing wildfire risk in our province,” said Bruce Ralston, Minister of Forests. Funding will be used to clean up dead material and ladder fuels in the understory, limit insect infestations by salvaging trees that host beetles, and improve foraging for wildlife. 

British Columbia’s 2023 wildfire season is now the second-worst on record — and it’s still far from over. As of July 13, 1,040 fires have been recorded and more than 1.22 million hectares have been burned, according to statistics from the BC Wildfire Service. The wildfire season is calculated from April 1 to March 31, each year. The bulk of this year’s wildfire activity has been within the Prince George fire centres, covering northeastern B.C. In that region, 346 wildfires have been reported and 1.14 million hectares have been destroyed. The Kamloops Fire Centre, which includes the Thompson-Okanagan, has had 167 fires and around 3,000 hectares destroyed. The amount of land burned provincewide so far this year now exceeds the damage from the 2017 wildfire season. …The worst fire season in British Columbia’s history was in 2018 when 2,117 fires destroyed 1.34 million hectares.

Fourth generation logger Bob Marquis has lived and breathed the forestry industry on the Sunshine Coast as well as globe-trotted around the world competing in logger sports games for more than 40 years. He is a former logger sports world champion, and the current president of the Powell River Logger Sports Board. “I started [competing] for my brother’s memorial show,” said Marquis, in an interview with the Peak. “He passed away in a logging accident.” …Marquis believes the local event is “Canada’s first real global competitive sport here in Powell River.” In 1971, BC premier WAC Bennett proclaimed logger sports to be BC’s official industry sport. At this year’s event (July 14 – 16 at Loggers Memorial Bowl), BC’s minister for sport and culture, Lana Popham, will be at the opening ceremony to proclaim July 15 as Loggers Sports Day in BC. “It’s rare to have an industry where there has been a sport created,” said Marquis. 

In the ‘50s and ‘60s, when I was working in the logging industry, we still had fire seasons. We still burnt slash, or mitigated as they now call it. We still had forestry lookouts. …When the weather became hot, these towers were manned day and night. When smoke or fire was spotted the forestry station then took action. …As time wore on, the forest companies and government decided that it was too costly to keep burning slash as there seemed there was not too much of a risk. It was decided if people were told to be careful there was no reason to shut down the forest during hot weather.  …Now we see the effect: this has helped create the fire problem we have. I hope this will let people know, we need the forest to be closed during these hot spells. Why take a chance? Mitigate, as they now call it, must keep going on. 

How’s that tree doing in your backyard or on the boulevard in front of your house or business? Strong winds last weekend brought some trees crashing down in Kelowna. Now they’re facing another threat from worsening drought conditions. “We are moving into pretty severe drought conditions in our area. What we might see from some of our trees in the city are kind of going into an early fall dormancy,” says Tara Bergeson, urban forestry supervisor with the City of Kelowna. “They’ll conserve energy by…we might see browning off, we might see fall colours coming a little bit early. “If you see that happening for trees on your property or on city trees on the boulevard, they could certainly use an extra five gallon bucket of water once a week to help them through this period.”

VANCOUVER — British Columbia residents will get a clearer picture today about the status of the drought that has parched much of the province. Emergency Management and Climate Readiness Minister Bowinn Ma has scheduled a briefing with weather and wildfire experts to provide an overview of the drought situation. Earlier this week, she urged B.C. residents to take measures to conserve water, including watering lawns sparingly, taking shorter showers and doing only full loads of laundry. Ma said many communities are already implementing water restrictions, and further measures across larger areas of the province are anticipated. …Premier David Eby and Ma both said this week the situation in B.C. is serious and much of the province has never before experienced the current level of drought this early in the summer.

PRINCE GEORGE, BC — It is a fundamental democratic principle that the taxpayer may scrutinize the public expenses they contribute to. So why don’t they let us see what we are brushing and spraying? …But you don’t. Those spray maps and brushing maps showing the locations where this public money is being spent, which Stop the Spray BC demanded two years ago, are still not published, despite new reporting requirements in forestry. It’s not like they can’t do it. The Ministry of Environment in fact gets the maps before spraying. They just don’t have to alert the public. …Back in 2018, when I got the spray maps directly from Canfor, I publicized a cutblock that shouldn’t have been marked for spraying. And what do you know? The company backed out of spraying it. …Canfor stopped giving me the maps after that.

British Columbians are invited to share their thoughts on grizzly bear stewardship and commercial bear viewing, as the Province develops strategies to strengthen environmental stewardship and biodiversity. The Ministry of Forests is gathering public feedback on the draft Grizzly Bear Stewardship Framework and the Commercial Bear Viewing Strategy through two online questionnaires, which can be accessed online until Aug. 18, 2023. The Grizzly Bear Stewardship Framework will strengthen stewardship of bears and their habitat, better managing biodiversity in B.C. and ensuring bears continue to be an integral part of healthy ecosystems. The Commercial Bear Viewing Strategy provides guidance and recommendations for bear viewing throughout the province. The strategy includes guidance for viewing bears in a way that reduces viewer’s influence on bears and the development of area-based viewing plans to ensure a healthy and sustainable wildlife tourism industry in British Columbia. 

Sophie Wilkinson

Wildfire scientist Sophie Wilkinson joins Simon Fraser University to launch a new lab addressing how increasingly volatile fire seasons are impacting communities and ecosystems. Wilkinson is founder of the new Fire and Ecosystems Research Group and an assistant professor in the School of Resource & Environmental Management (REM). She’ll head SFU’s Fire and Ecosystems Research Lab, where researchers will study wildfire behaviour and impacts and the conditions that fuel them, including the importance and management of peatlands (bogs, fens and swamps). …As head of SFU’s Fire and Ecosystems Research Lab, Wilkinson and her group are developing ecosystem management strategies that reduce the negative impacts fire can have on all aspects of the environment and society. …Wilkinson, a former NSERC post-doctoral fellow with the University of Toronto’s School of Forestry FireLab, is also collaborating with the Canadian Forest Service, Provincial Parks and resource and land managers from various industries.

Between June and November 2022, Russia’s largest timber company, Segezha Group, opted out of logging moratorium in ecologically valuable forests across Russia. According to World Wildlife Fund data, the total forested area that Segezha withdrew from protection and is now allowed to log is 1.5 million hectares. In Karelia, the company has already decimated 680 hectares of valuable forest. Environmentalists said that Segezha refused to protect valuable forest because the principle of sustainable land use no longer made economic sense for the company. After the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, began the European Union imposed sanctions on the import of Russian timber products, and the international organization the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) suspended certifications for responsible forest management in Russia. …Environmentalists in Karelia have tried to persuade Segezha to maintain the ban on logging in intact taiga. “They said they’d lift the moratorium because the FSC had left Russia.

There is no simple solution to protecting residents on the floodplain of Chemainus River from the potential impacts of a one-in-200-year flood, according to a report from Northwest Hydraulic Consultants. The report… concluded that building continuous dikes to control the flow of water and other major initiatives is not recommended, and that preparing for smaller and more frequent flooding events might be preferable. …After some discussion around the fact that logging and other industries further up the Chemainus River are contributing to the build up of sediments and logs in the waterway, the committee decided to recommend that a resolution be brought to to the upcoming Union of B.C. Municipalities meeting in September. The motion would be about cost recovery from those industries to help pay for the removal of logs and sediments from the river.

Prince George, B.C.: the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation (HCTF) is proud to announce over $8 million in funding for 167 fish and wildlife conservation projects throughout B.C. this year, with over $1 million allocated to projects in the Omineca-Peace region. Among this year’s projects in Omineca-Peace is a multi-year prescribed burn program which aims to restore wild sheep habitat in current and historical ranges. By treating grasslands with prescribed fire, forage will improve in quantity and quality, and sightlines will increase for better predator detection. “The overall goal of the Wild Sheep Habitat burn program is to restore and enhance habitat to retain healthy and sustainable sheep populations and to support ecosystem diversity at a landscape scale,” says wildlife biologist and project leader Alicia Woods of Ridgeline Wildlife Enhancement. …The project is being supported by the HCTF and the Forest Enhancement Society of BC with $123,462 in co-funding this year.

Wells Gray Community Forest Corporation Manager George Brcko speaks with conviction about the mandate of the corporation in Wells Gray Country, including the District of Clearwater. “We are here to protect the forests, the park, the water, that’s what community forests do. We are committed to managing the landscape to maintain healthy forest ecosystems and promote a future resilient forest,” said Brcko. During this crucial wildfire season … preventative planning and fuel reduction is top of mind in what has become a very dry situation in the woods throughout the Interior of B.C. …Brcko’s vision includes coming up with inventive ways to benefit the community, possibly reward good stewardship and collectively create a loop that will encourage involvement in forestry clean up while providing some employment opportunities, especially in the transition following completion of the pipeline project in the North Thompson.

The Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation passed a motion Monday to update the 14-year-old Stanley Park Forest Management Plan. “Back when the plan was created we didn’t have summer droughts as long as we have them now,” said Park Board Commissioner Tom Digby. “The park is not immune to the wildfires ravaging Canada.” Digby says updating the plan is long overdue in the midst of climate change. …One of the main concerns highlighted in the motion is the ongoing looper moth infestation that has killed about 20 per cent of the park’s trees. …The Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nation Development Corporation refused to comment on their involvement with the soon-to-be updated Stanley Park Forest Management Plan. …The park board has directed staff to prepare an assessment report on the looper moth infestation and fire risk by September this year.

Bowinn Ma, Minister of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness… “We’re investing in mitigation projects across the province.” …The Province is providing more than $44 million through the Community Emergency Preparedness Fund, which will go to more than 70 projects in 63 communities under the Disaster Risk Reduction-Climate Adaptation program stream. …Funding may be used toward: risk mapping, risk assessments and planning (such as the development of a hazard map); land-use planning (amendments to relevant plans, bylaws or policies); purchasing equipment (such as monitoring equipment); delivering community education; and small-scale structural projects. More than $1.76 million is being provided to the City of Grand Forks for a flood-mitigation project that includes channel excavation, installation of 82 fish habitat structures and planting 45,000 trees and shrubs along the channel banks and riparian area along the Kettle River.

A B.C. man has been ordered to pay the province $100,688 for what it cost the government to fight a wildfire he ignited in 2019. The decision, upheld by the Forest Appeals Commission, came following a complaint by the BC Wildfire Service (BCWS), after they responded to a 2019 wildfire in the Skeena-Stikine region. The decision … shows the liability individuals can face when they don’t plan before lighting a fire. “The total area burned was 11.5 hectares but could have been much larger if BCWS was not immediately dispatched,” said commission panel chair Cynthia Lu. On March 31, 2019, Realtor Eldon Whalen lit a burn pile on his property. Over the coming weeks, he returned regularly with buckets of water and hand tools to monitor the fire. But 40 days later he saw smoke and flames. He called 911 and told dispatchers he didn’t have the gear or water to fight the fire.