More funding for wildfires

With the temperatures heating up so too is the province’s wildfire action plan.

B.C Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources, Doug Donaldson announced that they will be boosting spending this year to help combat the wildfires burning the province.

The province has increased the wildfire budget by 58% to $101 million this year, which Donaldson says will help fight the fires faster.

“It’s going to mean more boots on the ground, and more people being able to respond to the fire fight, ” he says.

The province has scorched through it’s wildfire budget the past eight years, but despite that, Donaldson maintains that the province remains committed to doing whatever it takes to fight the fires.

” The B.C Wildfire Service has the statutory obligation to acquire the financial resources necessary to fight wildfires in any season.”

“I just want to assure people in the province that the statutory authorization is still there, the money will be there to fight fires beyond the $101 million,” he adds.

More money for fire prevention and reforestation is also on the way.

The province says they will be spending an initial $10 million on prescribed burning this year which is supposed to help reduce the amount of forest debris on the ground which acts as fuel when a wildfire sparks.

Donaldson also announced that $13 million over three years will go towards the Forest Carbon Initiative which is for the reforestation and restoration of forests.

The province is also toying around with using some new technologies like night vision goggles, which they say will help them detect fires when they are in an early state.

Donaldson says investing in wildfire prevention is important and blames the previous B.C Liberal government for failing to properly manage the forests.

” It was pointed out in 2003  in the Filmon report, that many of these kinds of strategies and actions on the land needed to take place and for reasons unknown to me they didn’t take place under the former Liberal government,” he says.

The province also promises to engage with First Nations and local governments on ways to reduce wildfire risks in the community. An additional $10 million has been added to the Community Resiliency Investment program which was created in Sept. 2018.

Last year’s fire season saw over 1.3 million hectares of land burned across the province, making it the worst fire season on record.