Tawnya Collins of Vernon was named the 2021 Professional Forester of the Year by the Association of B.C. Forest Professionals (photo courtesy of the ABCFP / Facebook)

By Liam Verster

wildfire resilience work

Local woman wins Professional Forester of the Year award

Feb 9, 2022 | 5:00 AM

A new resident of Vernon has been named the 2021 Professional Forester of the Year by the Association of B.C. Forest Professionals (ABCFP).

Tawnya Collins, a registered professional forester (RPF), was recognized by the group for her community wildfire resilience work in the Fraser Canyon, including in the Lytton and Lillooet areas.

Collins told Vernon Matters that she has spent the past 13 years working on wildfire resilience though the development of community wildfire protection and forest fuel management plans, and writing and implementing operational prescriptions for fuel management. She has worked with around 16 communities in the past decade, but most of her work has been focused on the Spuzzum, Lytton, Lillooet, T’sal’alh, Ashcroft and Nicomen areas.

“Community wildfire resiliency planning is very broad. It’s kind of the broader plan for the community that takes in a lot of higher level objectives looking at fire resiliency planning,” Collins explained.

“I was also working on operational treatment prescriptions, so the actual fuel reduction measures like the pruning, the spacing, the debris disposal. So in conjunction with doing the higher level planning, we were also doing on the ground prescription to reduce the fuels around the community. They were both kind of part and parcel for the work around the community.”

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Collins said although the Lytton Creek wildfire burned through many of the treated fuel management areas she prescribed, her work did reduce the severity of the blaze as it made its way through the region.

“Initial indications on some of the areas around the outlying Indigenous communities had shown that the treatments had actually slowed the fire and prevented the fire from kind of barrelling into the community,” said Collins.

She told Vernon Matters that research and studies of the wildfire and the impacts her work had on slowing the spread are underway, and while she could not say when those findings will be released, she did say initial findings showed the work helped create areas where fire crews could get in and fight the blaze. Her work also helped bring the fire down from the tops of trees to ground level, where it was easier to suppress.

“Tawnya’s dedication to assisting and protecting communities is highlighted by the fact that even while she was evacuated, she continued her work on projects focused on community wildfire resilience planning,” said Garnet Mierau, RPF, ABCFP president.

“Her years of work with the Skuppah and Nicomen Indian Bands also played a significant role in preventing these communities from being lost in the wildfire.”

The ABCFP presented Collins with the Professional Forester of the Year award during a virtual ceremony at the 74th annual forestry conference on Feb. 4, 2022.

Collins said she is grateful, humbled and still shocked to have won the award.

She also told Vernon Matters that everyone involved in the fuel reduction, programming and process need recognition.

“Right down to the fuel management crews, who were out in the middle of winter in minus-20, cutting down the trees and their fingers are frozen and their saws won’t start, to people laying ribbons out in the fields to do the mapping. It took a huge team to achieve these results, and I just played one part in it,” Collins stated.

She also wanted to thank the First Nations that worked along with the crews for their ongoing support in implementing and maintaining these practices in their communities.

Collins had been living in Lytton during the fire at the end of June. She and her two children were evacuated from their house for a month due to the wildfire.

Her house was spared, though the fire did get within one kilometre of the structure. After returning home Collins followed through with her plan to sell the house and move to Vernon with her children, which she did in November.