The Cheakamus Community Forest (CCF) is adapting its approach to managing community-based forestry assets.
Shifting from an ecosystem-based management (EBM) approach to a climate resiliency plan for the coming years, the new approach will incorporate wildfire and climate change risks that increasingly threaten CCF’s forests, which weren’t as prevalent when the previous plan was created more than a decade ago.
CCF, which consists of three stakeholders, the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW), Squamish Nation and Lil’wat Nation, held an information session Dec. 3 at the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre (SLCC). In attendance were representatives from the Nations, the RMOW and members of the public.
Heather Beresford, executive director for CCF, said the information sessions are helping inform community members.
“I'm really pleased with the response we had in November 2023 and this one, people seem to be getting a lot more out of it. I'd like to think that we are gaining trust in the community because they're learning more about what we're doing,” she said.
On deck for the evening were three professionals presenting three pieces of planning and research: Nick Soverel from Frontera Forest Solutions spoke about the first step, creating a risk assessment. Dr. Lori Daniels, UBC Koerner Chair of Wildfire Coexistence, spoke about how her research in in B.C. and Whistler on tree-thinning young and mature second-growth forests can reduce devastating crown fires. Lastly, Andy Kwan from Chartwell Resource Group touched on 2025 thinning and logging projects.
Climate resilience planning
Soverel’s presentation centred on how climate-resilience planning requires identifying the top threats to Whistler’s forests from climate change with a risk assessment. Using the RMOW’s research on climate change in Whistler, the top three impacts for forests are wildfire activity, forest stress and tree mortality, and forest health impacts from insects and diseases.
For tree mortality and stress, the CCF is exploring a program called the Climate Change Informed Species Selection Tool (CCISS). The provincial web-based application anticipates climate-related impacts on trees as ecosystems change, exploring what species can thrive and which ones may not survive in Whistler by 2100. Using this data, the CCF can find refugia: survival areas during unfavourable conditions.
Impacts on forest health were quite visible this year during an outbreak of spruce budworm, caterpillars that eat tree needles, turning their deep green an unsettling red. The CCF’s maps showed the outbreak extent in 2022 was light-to-moderate, growing in 2023 to include severe sections, and by 2024, severity worsened when Whistlerites could see it from above White Gold, Function Junction, Sproatt and Rainbow Meadows.
The solution for the pest is spraying Bacillus thuringiensis var. kurstaki (Btk), which kills the caterpillar and other species of insects.
Beresford said they’re continuing to monitor and it’s up to the province to respond.
“We have hope that they are going to be able to get their pest management plan, which is in draft form now, finalized in 2025, so if and when we have to take any further action like spraying Btk, they will have their advice,” she said.
Operationally, the risk assessment will inform next steps for managing the forest. There are three available approaches: resistance, resilience and transition. Resistance means largely leaving a forest as is because it’s likely to withstand climate change, usually old-growth groves. Resilience is earmarked for tree-thinning to reduce a wildfire’s spread, and transition would create new forest types, planting trees that are resilient to climate change and wildfire.
Increased thinning for wildfires
Daniels began her presentation with the realities of wildfires. From the 2021 heat dome which caused Lytton to burn down, to 15 million hectares burning in Canada during 2023, and Jasper’s devastating fire in 2024, the reality is inescapable.
For wildfire behaviour, she said three factors matter: topography, weather and fuels. The one that’s controllable is fuels. Daniels proposed removing forest fire fuels by thinning in young and mature forests, which her modelling shows would cut active crown fires in half.
The treatment mimics the appearance of mature forests, with more spacing between trees.
However, not everyone in the audience was supportive of her proposal. Rhonda Millikin, a local ecologist, published an independently funded, peer-reviewed study this year that showed forest-thinning was increasing fire risk by creating “warmer, drier and windier fire environments.”
“Trees actually do create the moisture. So, they create the moisture, and they retain the moisture," she said in an interview after the meeting. "If you stand in a place in Lost Lake, for example, where they fuel-thin, it feels warm and dry. Walk into the spot where they have not done that, and it feels cooler and humid. So that's because the trees are retaining that humidity, and that humidity is what will stop the fire.”
She also touched on how overgrown forests are a byproduct of forestry, because of over-planting practices, which leads to the need to thin them, compared to naturally regenerating forests.
Beresford said the CCF won’t dismiss her research outright.
“I view Rhonda's work as being something that says, ‘You might want to look at this,’ but at this point, it isn't enough to change our program entirely, but it does make us want to research this more thoroughly,” she said.
For a look at proposed fuel-thinning and cut blocks in 2025, check out the CCF’s plan here.
The CCF’s Phase 1 risk assessment is slated for completion in March 2025, Phase 2 operational strategy end of 2025, and monitoring and adaption from 2026 onward.
