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The fires in B.C. this summer are unprecedented. From the big Chilko Lake fire in the West Chilcotin to the Okanagan Mountain blaze and Lamb Creek in the Kootenays, the list expands to over 850 fires in the worst fire season ever. The shock, anxiety, cost in human lives and dollars is immense and will continue to accrue for some time. The question is increasingly becoming one of what can we do to prevent such events from happening again. There is a strong push to use the traditional methods to forge ahead. In particular, there are those who are suggesting that protected areas are the problem that we need to "thin" the forests in parks, get rid of the "bug infestations" and treat parks like any other part of the land base when it comes to fires.

This may seem reasonable until the other side of the story is examined. First, the "bug infestation" issue. The fact is that less than 10 percent of all beetle attacked forest in this province is in a protected area, so any amount of logging in parks will not have any significant overall effect on removing fuels or stopping the fire hazard. The majority of this summer's fires were started by human actions and/or were started outside of protected areas. For every Okanagan Mountain blaze there are dozens which started outside of the park system. The cry to log parks is just rampant scapegoatism, serving agendas which have little do with the real problems of fire in our forests and the way we cope with them.

While fire suppression outside of protected areas has had an effect on producing fire-ready conditions, far more significant are the effects of low rainfall and global warming. We are in the fifth year of drought conditions in the Chilcotin and in much of the rest of B.C. Along Highway 20 lakes are drying up and springs and swamps on local ranches are going dry for the first time in memory. Snow levels are down from the eighties and winter temperatures are averaging higher than ever before. We are experiencing the local effects of global events. No amount of logging parks or any other areas will stop these forces.

What to do? The solution is to recognize that we live in a fire ecosystem. Years ago, we built homes, villages and towns on flood plains. Good flat land, easily developed, great places to live... until the floods came. The recognition slowly dawned that these flood plains were part of a natural system of hydrology and needed to be treated as such. Planning codes were developed that regulated distances from riverbanks, height of foundations, building bridges to 100 year event levels, slope management to prevent siltation, protection of fish habitat.

This summer has reminded us that we live in a fire ecosystem. This awareness will allow the development of strategies to cope with this fact in the future. For example, subdivisions being built will need to place large permanent fire guards in place to cope with estimated 100 year fire events. If they need to be a kilometre wide so be it. Adequate reserve funds need to be in place year after year to ensure fast start up and deployment of people and equipment. Interface forest areas do need to have fuel removed, understory thinned and access maintained. Parks and protected areas need to have fire management plans. Individual homeowners with forest nearby need a fire plan which includes the rapid falling of nearby trees. Such a plan would identify the number and placement of fire hazard trees ahead of time and ensure the availability of the homeowner or a qualified faller to come on short notice to fall as many trees as needed.

Collectively, government, homeowners and the building industry must work to create a suite of measures which will cope with the new-found realization that we live in a fire ecosystem and as such, large fire events are going to happen; they are part of the life force in this great province of ours.

While nothing will ever prevent the wildfires in total, we can do a lot better in the future by creating new strategies instead of relying on ineffective ideas that destroy parks and do nothing to solve the fire risk problem.

- Dave Neads

More articles in the series, The Other Side of The Story

Cariboo Chilcotin Conservation Society
Unit 201, 197 2nd Ave North Williams Lake, B.C., V2G 1Z5
Phone/Fax: 250 398-7929 • ccentre@ccconserv.org • Coordinator: Marg Evans

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