Indigenous stewardship holds the key to wildfire prevention in national parks, Jasper hearings told

By Mrinali Anchan
CBC News
October 24, 2024
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

Members of Parliament along with industry forestry experts and Indigenous land stewards criticized present and past governments for not doing enough to prevent the wildfires that destroyed 30 per cent of Jasper in July.  Witness testimony during a parliamentary hearing Wednesday noted outrage over the lack of integration of Indigenous stewardship practices.  Meetings started in late September to examine the reasons why the Jasper wildfire started this summer. Thousands were forced to evacuate the area and more than 32,500 hectares of land was burned. “The intensity and prevalence of fires like these are exacerbated by climate change,” said Dane de Souza, a Métis Nation wildfire researcher and firefighter. “However, their cause is directly tied to the colonial suppression of Indigenous fire stewardship and fire on the land,” he said. De Souza said that Indigenous fire stewardship is a landscape-based science that is the culmination of 20,000 years of knowledge and practice. 

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