By Sean Brady – Kamloops This Week
A professor and researcher from the University of British Columbia says the next six to 18 months are going to be critical in preventing the next wildfire disaster in the province.
Lori Daniels, who spoke to students and faculty at Thompson Rivers University as part of an environmental sciences seminar series, is one of three signatories on a letter sent to Premier John Horgan and Forests Minister Doug Donaldson pressuring government to act to prevent another fire season like this year’s.
The letter calls on the government to improve forest resilience to wildfire and says changes are urgently needed, including acting to reduce available forest fuels, better planning for buffers around communities, improving forest management and funding further research.
READ MORE: 2017 wildfire season will go down as “unprecedented”
The letter says the 2017 wildfire season cannot be “just another wake-up call.”
“We had a wake-up call in 2003, ’06, ’09, ’10, ’11, ’12, ’14 in the north, ’15, ’16 in the north and ’17. How many wake-up calls do we need?” Daniels asked.
This past summer, more than 1.2-million hectares burned across the province, far surpassing the 1958 record of 855,000 hectares and dwarfing the province’s 10-year average of 154,000 hectares per year.
“In many ways, it was a tremendously remarkable summer and I’m hoping one that I won’t be saying a decade from now that ‘we should have acted after 2017’ — because I’m telling you right now, we should have acted after 2003,” Daniels said.
Following the 2003 “wake-up call” fire season, Daniels said between 2004 and 2015, only 10 per cent of the hazardous fuels identified were actually treated — at a cost of $78 million.
If costs can come down, Daniels said it would cost the province $3.2 billion to treat the remaining 690,000 hectares identified.
While conceding that might seem like an impossible amount of money, she noted the government spent $17 billion in seismic upgrades over the same period.
“I wonder why we didn’t at least commit a quarter of that much to protect the people of the interior of B.C.?” she asked.
During her presentation, Daniels shared research conducted by her graduate students that showed how B.C.’s wildfire-management strategy has made forests more vulnerable to fire.
By analyzing tree rings collected from forests in various parts of the province, Daniels and her graduate students were able to paint a historical picture of wildfires in the province that revealed the impact of how fires are fought.
“We’ve essentially eliminated our surface fires in the 20th century,” Daniels said.
She called the fire conditions of today’s forests “a consequence of our best intention.”
Trying to protect forests, communities and resources may be good for livelihoods and the economy, but it creates an environment where seasons like this past year’s can occur.
“The paradox, of course, is that we’ve created a situation where they’re much more vulnerable — and so are we,” Daniels said.
In 2012, the B.C. Wildfire Service changed its strategy to allow for a “modified response” to a wildfire, which means blazes are allowed to burn if they do not threaten people, property or critical infrastructure.
Strategies like this, along with forest management and prescribed burning, are what Daniels would like to see.
The letter sent to government is signed by fire ecologist Robert Gray and UNBC ecosystem science professor Philip Burton. It contains 56 recommendations and asks government to act on them.
“I think there’s some political courage needed in the next few years,” Daniels said.
