A new study predicts a dire future for B.C.’s wildfire situation unless major changes are made.
“In 2024, more than a million hectares burned, and we hardly spoke about it, because it seems to become the new normal, the new reality that we live with,” Lori Daniels, one of the authors and a professor of Forest and Conservation Sciences at the University of British Columbia said.
The study by UBC researchers says urgent change is needed in order for British Columbians to co-exist with wildfires.
The authors say they are concerned fires like the 2021 blaze that destroyed the town of Lytton are “inevitable” and will cause greater loss of life.
The report recommends a number of actions including using more prescribed fires to eliminate fuel, de-centralizing the firefighting response and acknowledging that some fires should just be left to burn.
“The irony or the paradox here is that we’ve become so good at putting out fires that we have changed our entire landscapes to make them more flammable, so the fact that we’ve been so good at putting out fires for many decades means that there is more fuel on the landscape today and when fires start they tend to be higher-impact fires,” Daniels said.
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The study also says homeowners can protect themselves from wildfires by retrofitting their homes with less-flammable materials such as fire-resistant roofing and making sure there is a buffer zone free of large vegetation around their home.
“Coexistence requires recognizing that not all wildfires can or should be suppressed, and that negative impacts will continue unless transformative changes to wildfire and forest management are made,” the study states.
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