Officials have reminded Whistler locals for years: wildfire poses the biggest risk to the resort.
It’s as true for residential neighbourhoods and Whistler Blackcomb’s gladed runs as it is for the Cheakamus Community Forest (CCF), the 33,000-hectares of trees surrounding Whistler, governed by a non-profit society of representatives from the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) and the Lil’wat and Squamish First Nations.
It’s why the CCF has directed a significant share of its resources to wildfire risk mitigation within its tenure in recent years. As forest fires rage across much of Alberta this spring, local officials hope the last major fuel-thinning project in the CCF, which began in January 2019 and ended in January of 2021, will prevent the community forest from suffering the same fate in the event a fire ignites nearby this summer.
The project is why you may have noticed swaths of trees removed from some sections of the CCF in recent years. Typically, according to the RMOW, crews manage wildfire-fuelling vegetation by “removing ground brush and debris, pruning lower branches, and removing tight, unmanaged second growth trees,” but leaving mature and deciduous trees untouched.
When planning for the CCF’s fuel treatments started in 2017, the main challenge was determining how to mitigate wildfire risk in a sustainable way, as the Forest Enhancement Society of BC (FESBC) explained in a May 9 news release.
Ultimately, “The wildfire risk reduction treatments were completed by the Lil’wat Nation forestry crews resulting in a reduction of the forest fuels, minimizing smoke emissions and maintaining the forest recreation values,” the FESBC noted in the release. “Moreover, the treated stands now have lower levels of fuel. Today, the successes of their efforts serve as a demonstration of the benefits that a tourist town can reap from implementing wildfire risk reduction measures.”
The CCF fuel-thinning project was ultimately made possible by $490,810 in funding from the FESBC, which the CCF applied for after creating the plan in 2017. The FESBC exists to advance environmental and resource stewardship of B.C.'s forests, including by preventing and mitigating wildfire impacts and improving wildlife habitat. As of last month, FESBC has received $311 million in funding from the provincial and federal governments to support 305 projects.
In the release, Lil’wat Nation’s Chief Dean Nelson said a province-wide call for municipal preparedness in the face of increasing wildfire risk helped spur the initiative.
“For the people living in Whistler, this work is very important for the prevention and cautionary awareness of potential forest fire danger,” he explained. The number of trees left following the fuel-thinning treatment varies between specific sites within the CCF, “from a density of 250 stems per hectare, up to 400 stems per hectare,” Nelson added, but “Fibre utilization from the treatments was undertaken, sawlogs were marketed for timber, the lower-valued residue was used for firewood and compost, and burning was minimized.”
The wildfire risk reduction work carried out in the CCF between 2019 and 2021 particularly focused on larger, landscape-level fuel breaks to prevent fires from spreading from the south of Whistler, according to Klay Tindall, Lil'wat Forestry Ventures LP’s general manager of forest operations.
“The plan was to remove approximately 45 per cent of the original stand of second-growth Douglas fir, totalling around 18,000 cubic metres,” Tindall explained in the release. “Where possible the residual fibre was utilized with lowered carbon emissions in mind. For instance, some fibre was chipped and mixed off-site with solid human waste to produce compost material.” Not burning that residual material meant less fine particulate matter—an air pollutant—was released into the atmosphere.
Today, “the treated area is now being used for new mountain bike trails by the Whistler Off Road Cycling Association and is giving them a great spot to build some more beginner and intermediate trails,” Tindall added.
The project was accompanied by more benefits, like positive impacts and more training opportunities for the Lil’wat community members employed to carry out the work, but it wasn’t without its challenges. That included everything from crews’ gaining recognition as competent forestry professionals to managing residents' concerns about declining property values, smoke from prescribed burns, and limited public access to active work sites within the forest.
One major obstacle was helping Whistler locals understand the long-term importance of forest-thinning work in the area, added CCF executive director Heather Beresford in the release.
“Some Whistler residents think that the thinning work makes the forests look ‘ugly’ and may even increase the risk of wildfire since they believe the forests dry out earlier in the spring,” she noted. “In response, the RMOW and CCF are implementing a monitoring program to measure certain characteristics pre- and post-treatment to see what is actually happening in the forests. This will give us valuable insight and ensure that our actions are having a positive impact.”
But the most valuable aspect of the project might not be as immediately visible to those recreating through the CCF. The work Lil’wat Forestry Ventures LP crews completed “occurred in a part of the province that has a high profile and where wildfire risk reduction work is just starting to be implemented,” added FESBC operations manager Brian Watson in the release.
“It’s important that people see this work so that they can be part of the conversation around wildfires and the risks they pose to our communities," Watson said. "What people will not see is that the project phased out most of the burning of low-value fibre that is usually associated with this work. When you consider the proximity of this work to homes and businesses, the benefits to human health are meaningful, not to mention the positive impact on the atmosphere.”
More fire mitigation will be carried out within the CCF in the coming years, as well as in the Spel’kúmtn Community Forest, the 17,727 ha. of land surrounding Pemberton and Mount Currie co-governed by the Lil’wat Nation and the Village of Pemberton.
Last November, the province announced it would invest $25 million through FESBC into dozens of projects across B.C., including two on the South Coast. Specifically, the Sea to Sky received $635,095 for manual and mechanical wildfire mitigation treatments in the CCF, on land adjacent to the WedgeWoods subdivision north of Whistler, and $183,456 to the Spel’kúmtn Community Forest for hand-thinning treatments in and around One Mile Lake Park.
The projects are expected to be complete by March 2024.
- With files from Robert Wisla
