A multi-year project on Fox Mountain near homes and properties is helping to reduce wildfire hazard and create healthier forests. The local Ministry of Forests has been managing the project, helping to oversee planning and contracts to complete the work to reduce accumulated forest fuels. This means cleaning up dead wood and woody debris, removing some larger trees to space them, where possible, and removing brush, juvenile trees and lower branches. …Much of the project work has involved hand-piling by contract crews and then burning or chipping and sending the chips for fibre, where physically and economically possible to do so. This work helps to ensure if wildfire does reach the treated area of forest, it would reduce the fire intensity in this section, helping keep the fire on the ground and potentially providing a point of defence for fire crews.

Known for its snow, Whistler, B.C., will soon be running an emergency simulation for a threat that’s becoming ever more present: fire. First responders will be running an emergency evacuation drill on April 18, part of the resort community’s recent Community Wildfire Resiliency Plan as drought and climate change continue to intensify fire behaviour and the threat to life it presents. “Whistler is in the trees, we live in the forest, so it’s a real priority for us to understand risk and then do everything in our power to ensure we are prepared,” Mayor Jack Crompton told Global News on Thursday. The community has been implementing recommendations from a recent report into wildfire preparedness, which includes a recognition that Highway 99 is the only way in and out of the community. …Residents are also being included in wildfire preparedness plans, with a heavy focus on education and encouragement to FireSmart their properties.

“The community of Logan Lake spent 18 years preparing for a wildfire they hoped would never come. Then, in 2021, it did.” That is the tagline that filmmaker Vesta Giles uses for her new documentary film The Test, which has its premiere in Kamloops on April 7. The film looks at the events leading up to the Tremont Creek wildfire of 2021. The fire forced the evacuation of Logan Lake a month later, and for a time it appeared that the town might be destroyed by fire only six weeks after most of the Village of Lytton burned to the ground. “I was there the day the community was evacuated”, said Giles, “and all I could think of was, ‘This is the test, this is the first time this has been tested’” “This” refers to the signs outside Logan Lake noting that the town was the first FireSmart community in the entire country. 

Last year’s record wildfires in Alberta destroyed habitat for threatened species and will change the makeup of the province’s forests for decades to come, says a new report. And the assessment from the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute says the chance of a repeat of 2023’s massive burn poses an ongoing challenge for both conservation and industry. “The future of fire, and how land managers and industries respond to it, will determine the sustainability of Alberta’s forests in the coming years,” the report concludes. …The report finds that more than 10% of the economically vital foothills region was burned. Several forestry companies lost between a tenth and a third of their harvestable trees. …The fires also lowered the average age of Alberta’s forests, a crucial figure in determining which forests can be harvested. …Caribou herds, which have already lost the vast majority of their ranges to industry, lost more of them to fire.

Devastating fires ignited by falling embers that destroyed hundreds of structures in the Kelowna and Shuswap areas last year underscore the need to increase the fire resiliency of homes and properties in B.C., according to the preliminary findings of a new study. Wildfire embers, some of which travelled 2.5 kilometres across Okanagan Lake, for example, were the primary mechanism by which fire entered communities in the Interior, shows an examination undertaken by FPInnovations, FireSmart B.C. and the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction. The preliminary findings, commissioned by the B.C. Wildfire Service and the B.C. FireSmart committee, were released this week. A final report is expected in May. …The findings show that embers ignited shrubs around homes such as junipers and cedars. …The findings also showed that homes and structures which had so-called “FireSmart” characteristics had better survival rates. …“There are simple things that people can do,” says Greg Baxter for FPInnovations.

A new dedicated wildfire training and education centre at Thompson Rivers University will welcome the province’s future wildfire fighters. The B.C. wildfire training and education centre is a first-of-its-kind program and is a flagship action stemming from recommendations from the Premier’s Task Force on Emergencies. “…By establishing the first-of-its-kind wildfire training and education centre in North America, we are preparing our future wildfire professionals for the critical work of protecting our forests, our communities and our families in a rapidly changing climate.” The centre, the first in North America to transition wildfire training into degree programs and research, will offer comprehensive wildfire training and education programs that progress from basic skills training and learning in the wildfire field, to the future development of wildfire academic diploma and degree programs in wildfire and emergency management disciplines.

Additional coverage in CityNews Everywhere, by Charlie Carey: B.C. to open wildfire education, training centre in Kamloops, first of its kind in North America