Commentary
Once again, dried out forests, brush, and timber are bursting into flames in regions across Canada, devastating areas including in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley, and causing a distressing amount of harm to people, property, livelihoods, and cherished environments, both natural and man-made.
Unfortunately, Canada is also enmeshed in another destructive cycle of policy argumentation over how we, as a society, can manage the risks. Specifically, policymakers and pundits are arguing about who can most aggressively regulate nature with controlled burns of fire-ripe forests or rapid dousing of flareups in certain areas.
Now, you can argue that Canada could better manage wildfire risk through better and more aggressive use of controlled burning, an ancient practice that became less fashionable over the years. Since 1990, the area treated with prescribed burning in Canada fell from more than 35,000 hectares to just 182 hectares in 2023—a 99.5 percent decline. That’s a lot less control. And higher levels of fire-management via controlled burning might mitigate some risk, particularly in areas near people….