Jed Cochrane has seen first hand the fast and furious work of wildfires.
Based on his knowledge and expertise, he and fellow fire expert Rick Kubian were invited to the United States this spring to share information on Parks Canada’s revered fire program with their American counterparts in the U.S. Parks Service and U.S. Forest Service in Idaho, as well as community leaders in the small tourism town of Stanley, which has been threatened by forest fires in recent years.
“They heard about what we’re doing here in the mountains, and specifically in Kootenay, with regards to fire management,” said Cochrane, the new fire and vegetation specialist for Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay.
“A group of stakeholders wanted to figure out ways to address their concerns, and involved the U.S. Parks Service, and invited us to give a presentation based on our experiences and our model.”
Stanley is home to about 60 year-round residents, but in the summer, like in Banff, Yoho and Kootenay, the population explodes as hordes of tourists arrive to camp, hike, bike and fish.
The Halstead fire of last summer burned 80,000 hectares of mixed conifer forest in and around the Salmon-Challis National Forest in the Sawtooth area, much of which is dead lodgepole pine killed by mountain pine beetles.
The lightning-sparked fire came dangerously close to the small town of Stanley, nestled beneath the Sawtooth Mountains in central Idaho.
The fire burned from July to October and closed campgrounds, briefly shut down Idaho State Highway 75 and put a damper on the short summer tourism season in Stanley.
“In the last 10 years, Idaho has had a series of very large wildfires and some of them came quite close to Stanley,” said Cochrane. “The Halstead fire came very close and put a bunch of smoke into their town. It also had businesses worried and also a lack of tourists due to the fact they were smoked out.”
Stanley business and community leaders have formed a group looking to prevent a worse fire burning in or near Stanley. They are lobbying the U.S. Forest Service to burn larger parts of the Sawtooth in spring and to log so-called anchor sections that will make future burns safer.
It would be an expansion of work already completed by the Forest Service with local officials and homeowners to cut down trees and do preventive burns around homes, businesses and developed areas.
The Sawtooth forest is lodgepole pine, and the U.S. Forest Service there has experience in burning ponderosa pine, but not nearly as much as the higher elevation lodgepole forests.
The community in Stanley has shown interest in using the model based on the work of Parks Canada, which has vast experience with managing and prescribing fires in lodgepole pine forests.
According to the Idaho Statesman newspaper, Ben Forsgren, the owner of Jerry’s Country Store, watched as winds sent 200-foot flames through the crowns during the fire, which burned to within five kilometres of his store.
“We can stand a little smoke in the spring,” Forsgren was quoted as saying in the Boise-based Idaho Statesman, “so we don’t get smoked out in the summer.”
In preparation for larger-scale prescribed burns, Parks Canada will clear or log an area to create an anchor or guard, giving managers confidence the fire can be contained, then light fires under certain conditions in spring or fall.
Parks Canada uses carefully planned prescribed fire to safely restore and maintain ecological processes, but also to protect nearby communities and infrastucture.
They use different techniques, including fuels management, prescribed fires and, in the case of last year’s Octopus Mountain fire, let nature take its course without any suppression.
Parks officials point to the fact that prescribed fires do important work that pays dividends for decades. For example, fires help maintain good habitat for many large mammals, particularly elk, moose, sheep, deer, wolves and bears.
Prescribed fire, they say, also helps control populations of insects such as mountain pine beetle and reduces the threat of wildfire to communities and neighbouring lands.
Cochrane said he and Kubian presented the details of their prescribed fire program, including how different areas in the national parks are zoned differently for fire management purposes.
He said they gave examples of the 2008 Mitchell Ridge prescribed fire and the 2012 Octopus Mountain fire, believed to be the first Parks Canada fire allowed to burn naturally without any human interference.
“We talked about some of our successful examples and the lessons learned, our keys to success like good communication, and what we would do to improve,” said Cochrane.
“They were very interested in some of these concepts.”
The mountain parks has had an aggressive prescribed fire program for many years, but 2003 fires throughout British Columbia, including in Kootenay National Park, proved a big wakeup call for fire managers.
The 2003 Tokumm-Verendrye fire in Kootenay, which came dangerously close to the historic Kootenay Park Lodge, ended up burning 12 per cent of that national park.
At the same time, the 2003 fire season was one of the most catastrophic in B.C.’s recorded history. Due to an extended drought in the southern half of the province, forest firefighters faced conditions never seen before in Canada.
Lightning strikes, human carelessness, and arson all contributed to almost 2,500 fires involving more than 10,000 firefighters and support personnel, and burning more than 265,000 hectares at a cost of $375 million.
Homes were burned and communities were evacuated, such as McLure-Barriere and Kelowna.
Cochrane said the fire prevention work around Lake Louise and the Mitchell Ridge prescribed fire in part, for example, came out of discussions following the 2003 forest fire season.
“Post 2003, people were saying if we’re not proactive about this, here’s what can happen,” said Cochrane. “2003 was a real turning point for the program.”
