Retired forester sounds alarm on B.C. Wildfire management
A retired professional forester who’s urging changes to B.C.’s approach to wildfires recently brought his message to this region.
“We’re especially concerned about the lack of any tangible actions being put forth by the provincial government to mitigate wildfires – this is especially concerning given that 95% of the province is Crown land and the vast majority of it falls under the jurisdiction of the provincial government,” said Archie MacDonald during a presentation last week to the board of the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen.
“I guess the lack of action can be best described by looking at the 2024 provincial budget, where $0 were allocated towards wildfire mitigation. They did allocate some money for wildfire suppression and a little bit for post-wildfire recovery, but $0 for wildfire mitigation.”
MacDonald, a former president of the BC Council of Forest Industries, has spent the early part of this year with his partner, fellow retired forester Murray Wilson, visiting local governments to build support for their calls for better management of wildfires.
Last year alone, wildfires scorched 2.8 million hectares of land across the province – about twice the size of the RDOS’s total jurisdiction – while the BC Wildfire Service spent $1 billion on its response, which MacDonald suggested is “just a fraction of the true costs” that include things like property damage and mental anguish.
Programs like FireSmart, which help property owners guard their homes against wildfires, are good, added MacDonald, but don’t do anything to promote forest health.
“Our goal has to be to create, develop much healthier forests. Typically, healthy forests are much younger – they’re less dense, multi-aged, multi-species, and have many more openings, breaks, meadows, and certainly contain much less fuel,” he explained.
“Unfortunately, our government doesn’t seem to understand this. All of their policy and focus lately has been on old growth, setting areas aside, minimizing disturbance – and, unfortunately, they’re making a bad problem worse.”
MacDonald called on the RDOS board to make it a political issue.
“We will continue to have fires, but we must reduce the fuel levels. Our objective must be younger, healthier forests, and forest management is the key,” he said.
“Provincial government policy must change and we believe that local government leaders can play an essential role in helping influence government to make these changes possible.”
Following a record wildfire season in 2023, the B.C. government announced in its 2024 budget it’s spending an additional $405 million over the next four years to prepare for and respond to climate-related disasters.
When it comes to wildfires, the province said it would, among other things, allocate $56 million in additional funds over the next three years for helicopter and air tanker services and $60 million for wildfire risk reduction and fuel management.
That’s on top of the $38 million it also committed to hire more firefighters.