As wildfire seasons become longer and more intense, prescribed burns can help prevent forests from becoming out-of-control infernos
The setting was idyllic: a clearing of tawny grass, ringed by lodgepole pines under a robin’s egg sky. Trucks pulled up, coffee and doughnuts appeared on a tailgate and a dog lolled in the sun.
Just as a homeowner might guard against wildfire by clearing brush from around their home, a prescribed burn clears out low-lying branches and dead shrubs, leaving less fuel if a wildfire comes through. ʔaq’am is a member community of the Ktunaxa Nation, an Indigenous people whose traditional territory lies in the Kootenay region of southeastern B.C. and who historically used fire to manage the landscape.
“That’s what success looks like,” Mr. Williams added, “when you’re able to come out here and see all the elk and the deer.” About 2.5 million hectares of forest burns in wildfires each year in Canada, a total projected to double by 2050. Canada already spends about $1 billion a year fighting wildfires, according to federal figures, but the damage from evacuations, industry shutdowns and destroyed homes and businesses can be much greater. Costs related to the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire, for example, have been pegged at about $9 billion.
In Canada, First Nations retain the right to undertake cultural burning on reserve lands, but “significant wildfire agency oversight and control is often required, leading to tensions when cultural burning goes ahead with no formal government approval,” said a 2022 study on Indigenous-led fire stewardship in Canada.
On the ʔaq’am fire, the co-operation showed. Radios crackled with messages between personnel tasked with starting, directing and controlling the flames. Burn boss Colleen Ross, who co-wrote the ʔaq’am First Nation burn plan with Mr. Gray, steered the operation, taking into account factors such as wind, temperature, relative humidity and visibility for the nearby Canadian Rockies International Airport.
“And by doing this, we can punch holes – so it can get up and be a raging fire, but when it runs out of fuel, it comes down.”
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