As Canada experiences its worst wildfire season on record, the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation has ordered an updated fire risk mitigation plan for Stanley Park.
Commissioners passed a motion Monday directing city staff to report back with an assessment of the forest fire risk in the beloved park, which contains close to 300 hectares of coastal temperate rainforest. Staff have also been called on to come up with an updated risk mitigation plan.
The last update to the Stanley Park Forest Management Plan was in 2009, and fire was identified as a threat at the time. Monday’s motion also notes that First Nations perspectives were not directly incorporated into that plan at the time either.
“Climate change is having a big impact on the park, and we simply need to evaluate the risks — all the risks of, you know, unsanctioned events in the park, these dying and dead trees that people can see everywhere they go in the park,” Commissioner Tom Digby told Global News.
“Our summers are hotter, they’re longer and they’re drier than they ever were back in 2009.”
Stanley Park’s trees have been struggling with drought conditions and an outbreak of the hemlock looper moth, which was also identified as a risk in the 2009 plan. An estimated 20 per cent of the mature forest left standing is now made up of dead trees.
In 2018, an update to the city’s Urban Forests Strategy directed the municipality to work with Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services to update procedures for mitigating wildfires in urban forests.
While it’s relatively uncommon for wildfires to break out in coastal forests, the 2009 management plan states that Stanley Park experiences a high number of annual fire starts — “either accidental or by arson.”
“Every park in Vancouver needs to be assessed for the risk of fire due to climate change, and indeed the large grassy fields we have — that can also be explosively combustible in the hot season,” said Digby.
“We know that Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services is on top of these risks … we see the fire department in our parks regularly, unfortunately.”
Stanley Park’s current fire management plan includes measures such as periodic mock fire response exercises, enforcement of the prohibition on camping, and regular removal of deadfall, woodpiles and other flammable materials.
Such measures are likely to continue under the plan, Digby said.
“There’s an awful lot of dead trees standing in the park, so some of those will have to come down,” he explained.
“Although, you know, we need to focus on the biological virtues of these parks, and sometimes dead trees have a lot of value to insect species, birds, other animals. So we’re not just going to take down every dead tree.”
The city may consider options for hydrating the park during the winter, he added. Digby recognized that other Vancouver parks may be in need of an updated fire management plan, but said each one must be “handled in its own unique way.”
As it stands, lightning strikes have nearly tripled the number of wildfires burning across the province. There were 318 as of Tuesday afternoon.