Worsening wildfires renew interest in traditional Indigenous forest management

18 July 2021

Published by https://globalnews.ca/

CANADA – Wildfire experts say British Columbia must spark far more prescribed burns, akin to how Indigenous communities have managed forests, to mitigate the risk of huge blazes.

“We’re not burning anywhere near as much as we should,” said fire ecologist and noted burn boss Bob Gray, from Chilliwack, B.C., who consults for local, provincial, state and tribal governments across Canada and the United States.

B.C. should be burning tens of thousands of hectares every year to reduce dense forests packed with fallen branches and leaves, said Gray, but the Forests Ministry said it burned an average of 5,000 hectares annually from 2010 to 2019.

As a member of a research team with the U.S. Forest Service in Washington state, Gray has studied what forests and wildfire behaviour were like when Indigenous burning was widespread, he said in an interview.

Talking with Indigenous elders about when and where they burned, examining early aerial photographs and comparing that information with physical signs of fires on trees, reveals a “mosaic” on the landscape with smaller burned patches, meadows, larger and more widely spaced trees and diverse vegetation, he said.

Gray likened wildfire to a contagion that can be mitigated through inoculation.

“There was so much burning going on and it resulted in all kinds of different vegetation types, and many of those just didn’t carry fire very well,” he said. “And so that historic landscape was basically vaccinated against large-spread fire.”

The wildfire that destroyed most of Lytton, B.C., last month has shone a spotlight on the government’s strategies for preventing and managing increasingly intense wildfires that Gray said will only become worse with climate change.