After devastating Summerland fire, B.C. faces call to 'cut red tape' for prescribed burns

After devastating Summerland fire, B.C. faces call to 'cut red tape' for prescribed burns

B.C. Wildfire Service acknowledges presrcibed burns for area around Summerland were in planning stages

As British Columbia grapples with wildfires of growing size and intensity, the province is facing calls to cut red tape to make conducting prescribed burns easier.

It comes amid concerns that a number of prescribed burns meant to protect the Summerland area from wildfire were delayed by government bureaucracy.

In a statement to CBC News, the B.C. Wildfire Service confirmed that preventative burns were in the planning stages for Summerland, Faulder, the Garnet Valley, and the Bald Range backcountry — all areas hit hard by an ongoing wildfire that's still burning out of control.

The fire caused the evacuation of 12,000 people, burned 150 buildings and killed one woman.

Evacuation order lifted for majority of Summerland

"We have to rethink where we are investing money, we need to get some of the regulatory red tape out of the way, which sounds wild coming from a conservation organization," Jesse Zeman, president of the B.C. Wildlife Federation told CBC's Daybreak South.

“We’ve tried to do burns in the Garnet Valley and in Bald Range and behind Summerland, and had a chat with the province and said 'Look, everywhere we are trying to do proactive work, and sometimes you are not permitting us to do it, these places are burning down.'"

A prescribed burn is a planned, managed fire that's intentionally set by trained experts to clear out dead brush and debris that could potentially fuel a wildfire.

They are a technique Indigenous peoples have used to manage forest landscapes long before European contact.

Bob Gray, a wildland ecologist who runs prescribed burns throughout the B.C. Interior, says they are a powerful tool to prevent fires.

B.C. communities preparing for wildfire season with prescribed burns

“It’s not all climate change-driven. You can have hotter, drier, windier [weather], if you don't have fuels, you don’t have fire," he said.

“If we focus on the fuels at the right scale, and that scale seems to be at 30 to 50 per cent of the landscape, proven through research, then we can get there.”

Gray said in many B.C. ecosystems a prescribed burn can virtually prevent wildfires for several years, and can reduce a wildfire's severity and intensity for a window of up to 10 years.

But he said the province is out of practice managing burns, because it essentially stopped using the technique in the mid-1990s, and has only recently reintroduced it.

According to Gray, proponents of a burn must first work with the local resource district and find who has tenure on the land or if there are overlapping tenures or wildlife concerns.

They then must consult with the local First Nation, potentially conduct an archeological impact assessment and write a fuel management prescription, he said.

“You go through all that process, and hopefully you’ll get the resource district manager to sign off, but there are a lot of people along the way who have an opportunity to comment on this, and you may have to adjust the boundaries, adjust how you are doing things," he said.

“After all of that is done, then you have to write a burn plan, and the burn plan goes to B.C. Wildfire Service for comment and sign off. So there’s a lot of steps along the way.”

How controlled burns can prevent wildfires

Gray added that many resource districts don't have enough staff to deal with that process while also managing permits for existing industry and licensees.

In an email, a spokesperson for the B.C. Wildfire Service acknowledged that the current layers of process "are a challenge" and have been an impediment to approvals.

However, they said the province has a responsibility to ensure a range of values, interests and objectives are fully considered.

"This responsibility is the same regardless of whether the project in question is a prescribed burn, new development or any other activity on the landscape with the potential to impact people’s lives," fire information officer Sarah Budd said.

"Across the board, the challenge of overlapping authorizations is common."

Budd said the wildfire service's cultural and prescribed burn program is "well aware" of the challenge, and created an inter-ministry advisory committee in 2024 to try and improve co-ordination.

Given the intensity of the summer's wildfire season, Gray believes the province will take another look at the hurdles this fall.

“This is fairly new," he said. "There are going to be bumps along the way."