Access Banff to save it from the Canadian fires

The work of the loggers was unmistakable.

Flanked by dense forests, the mile-long 81-acre expanse of land on the mountainside had been almost completely denuded. There were still only scattered trees, while a few thin felled trunks had been left behind. There was a path dug by logging trucks visible under a light blanket of snow.

Cutting down trees would be routine in a commercial forest, but this was in Banff, Canada's most famous national park. Net was once unimaginable in this green jewel of the Canadian Rockies, where the long-standing policy was to rigorously suppress every fire and preserve every tree.

But faced with a growing threat of fires, national park caretakers are increasingly turning to loggers to create fire guards: buffers to prevent forest fires from advancing into the rest of the park and nearby towns.

“If you were to have a very intense, rapidly spreading fire, that gives fire managers several options,” said David Tavernini, a fire and vegetation expert at Parks Canada, the federal agency that manages national parks, as he walked on the soft ground of the felled forest. flooring.

Still reeling from last year's worst fire season on record, Canada now faces the rapid onset of a new season. So-called zombie fires, which burned beneath snow-covered ground during the winter, have revived and forced thousands of people to flee affected cities and towns in western Canada.

After the warmest winter in Canadian history, communities near forests are preparing for another harsh fire season and an increasingly fire-prone future due to climate change.

Long-planned fire protection measures – such as the Banff Park Fire Watch in Alberta and other projects in the town of Banff – have taken on a greater sense of urgency.

Last year, a dozen fires, mostly caused by lightning, broke out in Banff and two adjacent national parks, including three near the new fire lookout. They quickly became extinct.

But across Alberta, the impact of last year's record fire season was “enormous,” said Katherine Severson, director of emergency services in the town of Banff.

The increased number of fires in sparsely populated areas of Canada has affected not only nearby communities, but also those far away, with the intense smoke they generated spreading across southern Canada and the United States.

“It's normal now: Every single day, cities and towns are deciding whether they can have outdoor activities because of the smoke,” Ms. Severson said.

Last year, fires burned 18.5 million hectares, or 46 million acres, of land in Canada, more than doubling the previous record set two decades ago, and sending smoke as far away as Europe. Fires have spread uncontrollably across the country, not only in western provinces accustomed to wildfires, but also in Quebec and the Maritimes, where such large fires are rare.

This spring, much of Alberta is facing drought conditions. In the Rocky Mountains, snowpack was “exceptionally low,” he said John Pomeroya hydrologist based near Banff and director of the Global Institute for Water Security.

“As a situation for this time of year, it looks worse than last year,” Pomeroy said. “But I justify it by saying that many things could change. Last year we also experienced record heat and a lack of precipitation.”

Extreme heat and unusual weather conditions helped create the conditions that led to last year's record fire season, he said Michael Flanniganfire management expert at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia.

“Last year was a real outlier,” Flannigan said. “So statistically, we're unlikely to get another outlier.”

However, fire agencies across the country — which traditionally hired staff only during fire season and included college students in summer jobs — are starting to hire year-round professionals as fire seasons get longer, Flannigan said .

In British Columbia, Mr. Flannigan said some “wintering zombie fires” were so large that fire crews failed to put them out along their perimeter, and are now actively burning.

“The fire season ended so late last year that they didn't have time to clean up as much as they would have liked,” he said.

In northern Alberta, the Beaver Lake Cree Nation reserve is one of many communities that are strengthening their firefighting capacity against the growing threat of wildfires. His fire agency now has 20 volunteers, up from seven last year, said Shane Bair, fire chief and emergency services director.

Last year, a human-caused fire on a ranch within the reservation burned 157 acres of land and came within a half-mile of homes. Residents of 23 homes were evacuated as firefighters struggled to control the blaze, fueled by strong winds and extremely dry conditions, Bair said.

To reduce the risk of a recurrence, Mr Bair's crew has carried out four controlled fires on the reserve this year to clear potentially flammable grass in large open areas.

“It hadn't burned in a few years, so we really wanted to get that part done,” he said. “We saw it as a high-risk, high-traffic area.”

The community hoped to perform more controlled burns, but was limited by the mild winter, he said. The snow melted quickly and little water was absorbed into the ground.

“Usually, we want to do those burns while there's still snow on the ground, so our window was very small,” Mr. Bair said.

In the town of Banff, officials cut down trees in wooded areas on the edge of the community to make them less dense and flammable. Embers from advancing fires can travel two kilometers, or 1.2 miles, through the air, igniting fires in areas across bodies of water, said Russ Geyer, the fire chief.

Firefighters must protect both residents and visitors to the town of Banff, whose population of 9,000 can swell to 40,000 on summer weekends.

Banff National Park, with its majestic mountains, turquoise lakes, glaciers and abundant wildlife, is by far Canada's most famous national park, attracting more than 4 million visitors from around the world each year.

In the town of Banff, firefighters are encouraging homeowners to make their homes safer by trimming low branches of conifers, installing sprinklers and upgrading wooden roofs with fire-resistant material, Geyer said, adding that some initiatives began two decades ago. does.

“We started slowly and people saw it as something we were doing, but it wasn't that urgent,” Mr. Geyer said.

In recent years, a rethink has also been undertaken on the methods of managing forests against fires.

In Banff National Park, which was created in 1885 and is Canada's oldest, officials until 1983 followed a strict policy of fire suppression, rather than taking significant steps to prevent or manage fires.

The result is now a landscape of dense forests dominated by conifers, which are extremely flammable.

Historic photos of the area before the park was created show a greater variety of trees and more open space, said Tavernini, Parks Canada's fire and vegetation expert. Lightning strikes and controlled fires by local indigenous people regularly thinned the forests, he said.

In recent years, parks officials have conducted controlled burns. But perhaps nothing is as large and visually dramatic as the 81-acre fire stand, completed last year, along a main road within Banff Park.

An even larger firefighting structure was completed this winter in adjacent Yoho National Park. Work on a third, near Lake Louise, one of Banff's most popular spots, could begin by the end of the year.

A logging company was hired to cut down the trees at the first two sites, carrying out the projects in exchange for the timber. Parks Canada also raised a total of C$80,000 from the sale of harvested timber to the two fire departments, said Shelly Tamelin, fire risk reduction project manager at Parks Canada.

Free of flammable conifers, firebreaks are designed to prevent advancing fires from spreading beyond them. They also provide staging areas for firefighters to directly attack fires by drawing water from nearby ponds.

At the same time, park officials were aware of the need to proceed cautiously with clearcuts in major national parks.

“We're trying to pick the areas,” Ms. Tamelin said, “where we need to remove the fewest trees to create the largest open space.”