Kevin Parkinson ignites slow-burning forest fires with a special kind of ammunition — thousands of tiny fireballs shot from the air into the trees below. …Parkinson, a wildfire operations officer based in Slave Lake, Alta., is one of the few people in the province trained in the complex physics of prescribed burns. …The machine Parkinson often uses to ignite these fires is called an aerial ignition device. A fully automated contraption that hangs from the belly of a helicopter, the equipment is useful in remote expanses of forest or grassland too difficult or dangerous to reach on the ground. The technology isn’t exactly cutting-edge, but it works. …Prescribed burns can also help during the peak of Alberta’s wildfire season — hot, dry summers that have become increasingly susceptible to uncontrolled fires. 

VANCOUVER — A ban on most types of open burning has been lifted across much of British Columbia. …At noon on Friday, the ban was lifted in the Coastal Fire Centre, which includes the Lower Mainland, the Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island. In a news release announcing the change, the fire centre attributed it to “recent rainfall that has reduced wildfire risk in the region.” At the same time, however, the centre asks anyone lighting a fire in the region to follow guidance on doing so safely. The fire ban has also been lifted in the province’s Northwest and Prince George fire centres, and partially lifted in the Kamloops and Southeast centres, according to the BC Wildfire Service. The ban on fires larger than a campfire remains in place in the Cariboo Fire Centre.

Carol Andrews

Each year a volunteer team sits down to the task of reviewing nominations to recognize outstanding local educators from across the Columbia Basin region for their efforts in educating their students on environmental stewardship and sustainability. …The Post-Secondary Educator award went to Carol Andrews from Selkirk College. …Andrews shared that “I love my job and my reward has always been the sharing that takes place between me and my students.  This award is a wonderful recognition from my peers and the community.” …Andrews is a Registered Professional Forester and worked as a consultant across the province before becoming an instructor… She teaches that modern forestry is so much more than it used to be. 

Birds will have fewer places to perch and nest in the downtown area after the parks and recreation department chopped down several trees that the cottony ash psyllid insect had infected. During the past couple of months, the department removed 30 Mancana ash trees from the area, with six more removals planned on Manitoba Street East and High Street East. Tree stumps with orange Xs spray painted on them have been noticeable, especially on Main Street. The insect outbreak is prevalent throughout the community and has affected private and public Mancana ash trees, as well as their hybrids, explained parks director Derek Blais. The damage can be severe enough to cause significant dieback or even death in stressed trees.

Devin Goodsman is waiting for the day developers engineer radio collars small enough to track the movements of a five-millimetre-long mountain pine beetle. In the meantime, he is relying on a more rudimentary contraption to capture beetles charting a flight path through the lodgepole pines of Western Canada. “We have a drone fitted with a butterfly net,” Goodsman said. “The plan is to catch them using an unnamed aerial vehicle at various locations, including above the canopy.” Goodsman, an entomologist with the Northern Forestry Centre in Edmonton. …But these annual pilgrimages above the forest canopy are not well understood, making the insects movements — and future infestations — difficult to predict. That lack of understanding means there is little clarity around how to best to quell infestations — and how much old infestations are contributing to new ones. 

Pesticide Free Powell River is working to stop the spraying of pesticides in the region’s forests.  The organization, with the goal of stopping the spraying by Western Forest Products of systemic pesticides starting July 1, 2020, until 2025, appeared as a delegation via teleconference before the qathet Regional District board of directors at its May 28 meeting to urge the board to express opposition to the pesticide application.  In an interview, Pesticide Free Powell River member Lisa Marie Bhattacharya said the organization does not consent to spraying of pesticides in forests or using other means to significantly reduce biodiversity in local forests. The organization states that spraying puts watersheds, wildlife habitat and food sources, berry and mushroom foraging, soil stability and carbon output at risk, and increases wildfire susceptibility.

Rachel Holt

A Nelson ecologist says the B.C. government is misleading the public when it states that 23 per cent, or 13.2 million hectares, of the province’s forest is old growth.  Rachel Holt, a consulting ecologist, says those numbers are technically correct but the province has lumped together several different kinds of old growth, and that 80 per cent of it consists of small trees less than 15 metres tall and only three per cent consists of the large trees over 20 metres tall that the public recognizes as old growth.  Holt is a Registered Professional Biologist with decades of experience working with land management and old growth issues.  She and two other scientists – ecologist Karen Price and forester Dave Daust – published B.C.’s Old Growth: A Last Stand for Biodiversity (attached below) in April on their own, not on behalf of any organization or government.

Mosaic Forest Management and the Province of British Columbia, through the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, have entered into an agreement to have 15 small lakes within Mosaic-managed private forest lands on Vancouver Island stocked with trout.  The Freshwater Fisheries Society of BC, a non-profit organization that works alongside government’s fisheries management agencies, will conduct the stocking in 2020.  By working together to ensure the continued stocking of lakes on Mosaic private forest lands, the Ministry and Mosaic are increasing local angling opportunities on 15 popular fishing lakes in 2020 between Campbell River and Shawnigan Lake.

INDIAN HEAD, Sask. — You can’t really miss seeing them when you drive across the Prairies — straight rows of dense, dark-green trees, positioned as if someone had thrown up a tall, thick wall in the middle of a field.   Perhaps less obvious is their starting place, a former century-old tree nursery that Stephen Harper’s Conservative government shuttered in 2012, citing budget cuts and touting purported interest from the private sector to keep its purpose alive.  …Yet the legacy is obvious: In the 111-year history of the Agroforestry Development Centre, it provided 610 million trees to the three Prairie provinces. Now, Saskatchewan’s Carry the Kettle Nakoda Nation owns the land, after buying it in 2016 from Ottawa for $1.5 million through a Treaty Land Entitlement (TLE) process. It’s eyeing business development there while honouring the legacy its five total managers, employees and summer students helped build.