Four watershed governance projects on Vancouver Island are sharing in nearly five-million dollars being distributed throughout the province from the Watershed Security Fund. The money will contribute to improving and rehabilitating communities’ resilience to climate change, regional food security, as helping safeguard fish, and local habitats. The Cowichan Watershed Board is receiving $400,000 to enhance its ability to support local leaders in decision-making for the health of the Cowichan and Koksilah Watersheds. The funding will help support the work of the watershed board, expert staff, technical working groups, and the community to solve problems using Quw’utsun and western knowledge and science.

SenseNet is a Vancouver-based technology company providing a rapid wildfire detection solution. The upstart leverages fire detection technology integrating sensors, cameras, and artificial intelligence-powered analysis to provide accurate and early alerts to wildfire threats. SenseNet this week announced a partnership with neighbouring drone company SkyScout AI to combine the two B.C. companies’ technologies. “The integrated solution provided by SenseNet’s sensors and state-of-the-art AI algorithms, combined with the drone technology of SkyScout AI, provides an unprecedented early fire detection system that can be deployed and scaled to enable informed and immediate response, critical to first responders charged with expansive wildfire surveillance and mitigation,” stated SenseNet chief executive officer Hamed Noori.

James Steidle

Regardless of whether the BC Conservatives or BC NDP come out on top in the recounts, the BC Greens will hold the balance of power. Here’s the northern BC agenda from a Green perspective they should demand in any coalition. Get plantation thinning going: The former BC NDP government was holding back on approving plantation thinning permits. Get small value-added forestry going: Every home in Prince George should have local birch hardwood flooring but you can’t even buy it. Ban forestry herbicide spraying: …only the Green Party said ban all herbicides. Get meaningful Indigenous reconciliation going: Lots of work to do but a big one is funding a northern Indigenous Art, Culture and Technology centre in Prince George. Legalize grizzly bear hunting: For too long urban progressives have alienated rural folks to keep their urban base happy with political decisions like blanket bans on the grizzly bear hunting. 

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.