A series of prescribed burns will cover about 60 hectares in the Mayfield Lake area, about 10 kilometers north of Alkali Lake and west of Dog Creek Road.
The burns will be conducted by Alkali Resources Management Ltd. and the Esketem’c First Nation, with the assistance of the BC Wildfire Service.
The burns are set to take place between Wednesday, April 25 and May 4.
They’re hoping to start today around 3 p.m., said Gord Chipman, manager of Alkali Resources Management and a professional forester.
“The conditions are absolutely perfect right now,” said Chipman. “There is still snow on the ground in a lot of spots, there is snow in the trees and the grass is not green yet. It’s still dead, so we’ve got about a three day window between no grass to being green grass and then we won’t be able to burn at all.
“It’s a real tight window.”
The prescribed burns are planned to help restore natural grassland ecosystems to the area - ones that were historically maintained through frequent, low-intensity ground fires.
“What happens over time is fir trees start taking over the grasslands and that interface between forest and grasslands. If we let the trees keep growing all the grasslands will be gone,” said Chipman.
The managed fires are intended to help maintain the traditional grassland plant communities native to the area, as well as reduce fuel loads and flammable materials in case of future wildfires.
“This is traditional forest management. The First Nations have been doing this in the province for thousands of years and it’s something that we want to build more capacity in and we want to make it more of an active program in the spring and fall,” said Chipman, adding that while the burn is not happening near houses, in the long term he could see using controlled burns in areas around communities where fuel has already been reduced through harvesting and spacing.
“We’ve eliminated prescribed burning in this province for essentially the last 20 years. There’s been very little of it especially in urban areas. A lot of people don’t like smoke, a lot of people aren’t comfortable with fire.
“You see that paranoia about fire right now. There are a lot of people who are really scared of it and it will take a little bit of education in our society for people to get accustomed to fire in our ecosystems,” Chipman said.
The project has been in the works for over four years, said Chipman, adding they started by removing many of the overstory trees and worked with ranchers on range management.
The fires are supported by the Ministry of Forests Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development’s Ecosystem Restoration Program.
The fires will be overseen by a “burn boss” who will ensure the burns are only conducted when conditions are suitable and are out when the burn is over, and fire crews will carefully monitor the fires.
Alkali Resources Management Ltd. will be bringing 10 firefighters out to the burn, with an additional three from the fire centre and several supervisors.
They’ll have heavy equipment on site, with water and hoses, and they’ll use drip torches and hand tools, Chipman said. They’ll also to go along the edges of the burn and remove dead trees or other things that could be considered “wicks” that can draw fire into the forest.
“We remove fuels all around the edge so there is quite a bit of preparation and planning involved.”
The resource management fires are part of ongoing ecosystem restoration program administered b the provincial government through the Cariboo’s Ecosystem Restoration Steering Committee, in consultation with First Nations, local ranchers, local forest licensees, outdoors organizations, the Fraser Basin Council, the B.C. Wildlife Federation and the Cariboo-Chilcotin Conservation Society.
“Fire is just as natural as sunshine and rain and our Douglas-fir ecosystems require all three of them.”
