Photo: Josh Dawson

University of Northern British Columbia professor Che Elkin speaks at the Wildfire Resilience Consortium of Canada’s inaugural Building Foundational Knowledge gathering.

The impacts of climate change on wildland fires, cultural burning practices and inter-government cooperation are areas of research and interest among experts gathered by the newly-formed Wildfire Resilience Consortium of Canada.

The national consortium was announced in July and received $11.7 million in funding over four years from Natural Resources Canada through the Wildfire Resilient Futures Initiative.

Delegates from across Canada met for the first time on Thompson Rivers University’s campus last week for a three-day conference, which aimed to facilitate discussion, networking, and to pool knowledge.

Rapid-fire presentations on Tuesday saw recipients of Natural Resources Canada’s Building and Mobilize Foundational Wildland Fire Knowledge program speak about their projects and research studies. The federal program funded 30 projects across Canada with a total of $45.7 million.

Many of the presenters spoke of the increasing severity of wildfires, highlighting recent record-breaking fire seasons in B.C., Ontario, the Northwest Territories and New Brunswick.

Climate change plays a role

University of Northern B.C. professor Che Elkin said climate change is having an impact on forest ecosystems, affecting individual tree growth and mortality.

“There’s going to be shifts in the amount of stresses that our forest ecosystem is experiencing through things such as drought, as well as changes in the frequency and severity of large scale disturbances such as wildfire,” he said.

Elkin is the co-lead on a project in Central Interior B.C. that examines how climate adaptive silviculture solutions — like changes in harvesting and management strategies, or planting new species altogether — influences the risk of wildfire, micro-climate conditions and fuel loading.

“We’re basically testing different silviculture strategies that can be used to mitigate climate impacts, and this goes from fairly light touches to really quite heavy touches,” he said.

University of Victoria professor Dr. Andrew Weaver is working with researchers at TRU and the Canadian Center for Climate Monitoring and Analysis to study how climate change will affect fire risk.

The project aims to calculate what different climate scenarios will mean for the length of fire seasons, severity ratings and risk management.

He said the world is heading “to a climate for which there are no parallels in human history.”

“The reason why we’re in such a conundrum with respect to the lack of policy in terms of mitigating climate change, and the reason why we have to focus so much now on adaptation is largely because of political will,” Weaver said.

“Because climate change really is an issue for which the solutions will not show an effect in the lifetime of the decision makers putting in place the policies for those solutions.”

Robin Tremblay, wildfire operations researcher with FPInnovations, said climate change is causing more intense “mega fires” and his team is seeking to study and assess the increasing use of pyrosylviculture treatments — or prescribed burns.

He said the goal is to bridge gaps in knowledge in implementing the practice as it becomes more commonly used by governments, particularly to reduce fuels.

‘Weaving’ in Indigenous knowledge

Dexter Bruised Head, lead fire guardian with Alberta-based Blood Tribe Fire Management, said the Blood Tribe is working to “bring back” cultural burning while spreading fire-related knowledge to community members and developing tools and resources.

He said a lot of traditional Indigenous knowledge has been lost because of Canada’s colonial history, but some of that knowledge has been passed down orally and can be found with elders.

“Our foundation on how we operate is gathering the information of Indigenous ways of knowing, and that’s really our elders,” Bruised Head said.

Matt Nelson, First Nations’ Emergency Services Society wildfire specialist, told Wednesday’s crowd the society’s project aims to enhance wildfire risk prediction and management by “weaving” Indigenous knowledge and practices with new technology.

The goal is to equip First Nations with the knowledge to lead integrated wildfire management plans and restore cultural fire practices.

“We’re able to teach what proper burning was, and some nations need that support,” Nelson said.

The Bulkley Valley Research Centre is currently implementing Indigenous-led approaches to forest management alongside the Cheslatta, Wet’suwet’en and Gitanyow Nations in northwest B.C.

Dr. Kira Hoffman, a research associate with the centre, said the project is about building relationships to combine forestry expertise and practices, including cultural burning.

“We’re really trying to weave together both the many types of knowledge and science that are out there,” she said.

“We’re coming together to reimagine again how we can work together, and that means breaking down silos, and again, just being out there in the woods learning and burning together.”

Fire doesn’t see ‘imaginary lines’

Johnathan Reimer, emergency services manager for the Capital Regional District on Vancouver Island, said the district is working to find a way to effectively manage wildfire between various governing bodies within its borders.

In order to do that, he said that means bringing together municipalities, FireSmart programs, Indigenous knowledge keepers, and the emergency preparedness and fire response communities to work together.

“We have about 50 folks, 50 bodies who have a piece of this problem, but fire doesn’t see any of our imaginary lines,” Reimer said.

“As government bodies, where we already have jurisdiction, responsibility for making decisions around fire use, around mitigation, around regulations, around response — if we’re not on the same page, how are we supposed to approach and work with fire stewards.”

Justin Ersser is the emergency coordination manager for the Grand Council Treaty #3, which encompasses about 20 communities in northwestern Ontario, and said governance is “fragmented” across federal, provincial and Indigenous authorities and often lack communication between the three.

He said the council is working to bridge the gap between the parties by improving collaboration. That involves integrating Indigenous knowledge into western knowledge.

“It’s really about building a relationship and building trust with each community individually, and using that information in an ethical way,” Ersser said.

York University associate professor Dr. Eric Kennedy’s research is examining why local governments under the provincial level get involved — or don’t — when it comes to fire mitigation strategies.

“We have some of the technologies, we have some of the tools to put into place, and it’s always those pesky humans getting in the way of the mitigation and uptake and maintenance piece,” Kennedy said.

He said the goal is to identify barriers or enablers in adoption of mitigation strategies, with the aim of making them easier for local governments to use.