Innovative initiatives are helping build resilience in the Okanagan
Original article in Canadian Forest Industries Magazine, May/June 2025. Written by Andrew Snook.
Residents that reside in the Okanagan Region of the B.C. Southern Interior are no strangers to the risk of wildfires.
In 2003, a lightning strike during the driest summer on record at that time sparked the Okanagan Mountain Park fire. The massive wildfire destroyed more than 200 homes and forced the evacuation of 27,000 local residents. Twenty years later, the McDougall Creek fire forced more than 10,000 residents of West Kelowna to be evacuated with additional wildfires within the Central Okanagan Regional District forcing evacuation orders to be sent to nearby residents in the city of Kelowna and the District of Lake County.
While these were destructive fires, they are only a couple examples of the thousands of wildfires that take place across Canada annually. The size and scope of wildfires continue to grow almost every year. In 2023, there were 6,623 wildland fires that burned more than 15 million hectares (ha.) of Canada’s managed forests – a huge spike over the 2.1 million ha. average that typically burns on a yearly basis. The annual financial cost to battling these wildfires is significant with a price tag that ranges between $800 million to $1.4 billion for evacuation and firefighting and prevention costs (firefighters’ salaries not included).
In the Okanagan, some of the communities that are at higher risk of wildfires are currently working on innovative initiatives to help reduce the spread of potential wildfires in their areas through projects overseen by the Forest Enhancement Society of BC (FESBC).
The main purpose of the FESBC is to advance environmental and resource stewardship of B.C.’s forests by preventing and mitigating the impact of wildfires; improving damaged or low-value forests; improving habitat for wildlife; supporting the use of fibre from damaged and low-value forests; and treating forests to improve the management of greenhouse gases.
CITY OF VERNON ELLISON PROJECT
One of the FESBC’s projects it is currently overseeing is the funding of a wildfire risk reduction (WRR) treatment in the City of Vernon. The project’s contractor, Rider Ventures, is currently working on a landscape level fuel break on the west flank of Predator Ridge and above Okanagan Lake.
The FESBC had previously funded the prescription development and Phase 1 treatment in this area, which was identified as high wildfire risk and high priority for treatment. Established in 2015 in Coldstream, B.C., Rider Ventures specializes in wildfire and flood protection, forestry, and emergency response training.
The total area under prescription is 71.8 ha. This is addition to area that was already harvested in 2021 on the lower slopes by BC Timber Sales (BCTS), which created a larger landscape level WRR treatment area, explains Tyler Field, operations manager for the FESBC.
“This current project was brought forward to FESBC for funding starting in 2022 by the City of Vernon,” Field says. “FESBC funded the prescription development which includes all the field work (data collection), costs associated with referrals, etc. Subsequently, FESBC has awarded funding to complete most of the prescription area which started in 2024 and continues today.”
The entire area totals about 150 hectares of crown land nestled in between private property, including Ellison Provincial Park, which was also identified as a high-risk area but is under another jurisdiction with different standards for fuel management. To access the prescription area, FESBC needed to get permission from a private landowner so the work could be performed. In many cases, due to the nature of the work, building positive relationships with private landowners is essential for these types of projects to succeed.
When we arrived at the site of the City of Vernon Ellison WRR project, you could see a large tree that had been scarred by lightning strikes. Piles of biomass had been collected by Rider Ventures for the purpose of burning them, but there are so few days where a controlled burn is permitted that the contractor decided to take another approach. They purchased a small remote-controlled, tracked Bandit 12XP drum style mobile chipper and are grinding some of the biomass piles and spreading them out across the forest floor.
“It’s got a smaller base so it can go through the bush a lot easier and there’s less impact to the ground,” explains Brad Mailhot, manager of Rider Ventures. “You can keep it fairly even and spread across the prescription, so you don’t get too much load on the ground.”
Chipping as a means of reducing wildfire spread is a fairly new initiative, so more data needs to be collected to measure its effectiveness in the long-term.
“They still have some form that is combustible, but for how long? That depends on the climate that we’re in,” explains Kyle Gillich, planner for Forsite Consultants, which works with FESBC in delivering cost-effective forest management services. “This is a really dry site, so that’s why it is a bit of a pilot experiment. We haven’t chipped and scattered this much area on a dry site before, so we’re curious how long it’s going to take to decompose; how it affects the hydrological function; and the cover of other plants – existing native species, herbs and shrubs.”
Gillich would like to monitor the effectiveness of the chipping as part of the post-treatment assessments to make sure that the prescription targets are being followed. He prefers the chipping method over controlled burns due to the narrow burning window.
“These guys have few opportunities to burn here before it’s too dry and fires are getting away. Or in the winter, you have poor venting conditions where you can have snow cover – it’s safe, you just don’t have the atmospheric conditions to burn,” he says.
Even when you can burn, it can illicit panic from nearby residents. “People see smoke and there’s a lot of panic,” Mailhot says. “So, even if it’s wet enough to burn, if you light up, you have a public panic so bad it’s not worth it.”
The application for this project was submitted by the City of Vernon’s Fire Rescue Services. “We’ve been championing these types of projects on Crown lands within the City of Vernon on city lands and in the private sector,” says David Lind, Fire Chief for the City of Vernon. “The fire doesn’t know any boundaries and we need to treat the landscape at scale in order to get effective fire breaks… if we get to a situation where we have embers cast into the city and we have to evacuate a city of 45,000 people that includes hospitals and seniors homes, it’s a pretty challenging task.”
Another part of the prescription was the removal of some of the limbs from tall trees to improve the ability to fight wildfires when they occur.
“We’re getting rid of biomass and getting rid of the hazard and the ladder fuels, but we’re also getting rid of some of the hazards,” Field says. “So, if a crew did have to come in here and action a fire from a lightning strike, it’s safe for them to do.”
MORE OUTREACH NEEDED
While these types of initiatives are for the betterment of the forests and the health and safety of the surrounding residents, that doesn’t necessarily make these projects an easy sell.
“To just to go in there and extract fibre and tell people that you’re making things safer is not often that easy, because there’s a lot of conflicting objectives,” Field explains. “But with more and more wildfires happening in interface areas, people are starting to realize that’s what needs to happen. It’s about building a bit of a trust and social license with people… we try to do projects that are meaningful, but we also try to educate and build trust.”