Why is this Project important?

There is a consensus that our forest and fire
management strategies need to shift to
reduce the negative impacts of wildfire and
to promote resilient ecosystems.

The Bulkley Morice area, like much of BC, is
experiencing an increase in wildfire number
and intensity. Climate change and
extraordinary weather events are affecting
the size and severity of wildfires which are
having profound impacts on BC
communities and ecosystems. Although it is
generally understood that fire is a natural
and necessary process on the landscape,
the fire ecology and efficacy of risk
reduction treatments is not well understood
in the Bulkley Morice planning area.

4 goals

  1. Improve knowledge about wildfire resilience in the face of a changing climate and increased wildfire risk.
  2. Develop a landscape-scale wildfire resilience model with conservation and carbon submodules to support planning and programs in the area.
  3. Support land managers to develop strategies that increase ecosystem resilience in forest management and wildfire plans that are based on the best available science of wildfire resilience.
  4. Operational forestry plans and wildfire mitigation prescriptions are prepared using updated wildfire resilience knowledge.

To achieve these goals, the project will develop a Knowledge Report that describes the best available information about wildfire resilience and documents areas of uncertainty where improved knowledge is required to support decision making.

A landscape wildfire modeling toolkit will help project the
future risk of wildfire under a changing climate and the effects of wildfire mitigation strategies; submodules will examine the relationship of wildfire to conservation values (such as refugia) and carbon.

Relationship to Planning Processes

Best practices for enhancing the forest’s resilience to wildfire point to the critical need to:

  • plan at the landscape scale,
  • consider the future climate’s effect on wildfire,
  • use the best available science,
  • include local and Indigenous knowledge,
  • involve stakeholders, and
  • work collaboratively across governments

The pilot will support multiple planning processes, including the FLP and tactical wildfire, and may also support Indigenous fire stewardship.

Project Timeline

The project outcomes are designed to be collaborative and iterative from start to finish. Workshops conducted with local knowledge holders will inform the development of knowledge reports, model parameters and scenario assessments as the project progresses.