Cliff White

The agony of last summer’s Jasper wildfire casts a long shadow across the Bow Valley. The blaze left a smouldering $1.23 billion in devastating costs to the Jasper area, while also leaving experts predicting — and residents worrying — that other pristine mountain communities such as Banff and Canmore could be next. …“It’s just so primed to burn, you can’t stop it — I don’t think Banff has time,” Cliff White, a former Parks Canada forestry scientist said last summer. …With the lack of follow-up on tending to prescribed burn areas and other breaks “we are doing about one-fifth of what needs to be done just for maintenance, and given the backlog of biomass accumulated, we are at about one-tenth of what should be done for the next two to three decades,” said the Cliff White.