Community Engagement With Proactive Wildfire Management in British Columbia, Canada: Perceptions, Preferences, and Barriers to Action

Abstract

Wildfires in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) are increasingly threatening lives and livelihoods. These growing impacts have prompted a paradigm shift toward proactive wildfire management that prioritizes prevention and preparedness instead of response. Despite this shift, many communities remain unprepared for wildfires in the WUI due to diverse individual and social-political factors influencing engagement with proactive management approaches. The catastrophic fire seasons of 2017, 2018, and 2021 in British Columbia (BC), Canada, highlighted just how vulnerable communities continue to be and the urgent need to understand the factors limiting engagement to future resilience to wildfire. Our study, conducted prior to the catastrophic fire season in 2017, surveyed 77 community leaders across BC to better understand the factors driving engagement, including risk perception, preferences and support for approaches, and key barriers limiting progress. We demonstrate that wildfire risk is an urgent issue facing communities across BC, but a range of factors drive variable community engagement with proactive wildfire management. First Nations and smaller (≤5,000 residents) communities were less likely to have developed a community wildfire plan, even though First Nations were significantly more concerned than municipalities/regional districts about certain values (such as drinking water and biodiversity) that were at risk from wildfire. In general, proactive approaches that were considered effective were also the most supported. The most highly supported approaches included enforcement of regulations and education, both of which are considered provincial responsibility in BC and are unlikely to alter community values in the WUI. In contrast, approaches involving prescribed burning of the understory had the highest levels of opposition. Despite variability in these individual factors, social-political barriers related to financial and social (time and expertise) capacity primarily limited engagement with proactive wildfire management, including provincial and federal funding programs. However, these barriers are not equally felt across community groups; First Nations identified social capacity (such as expertise on government-sponsored approaches and awareness of funding programs) as significantly more limiting than municipalities/regional districts. Our study illustrates the limitations of implementing a “shared responsibility” of proactive wildfire management in the WUI in BC without targeted supports to address unequal capacity barriers.

Citizen Engagement in Wildfire Management: Needs, Challenges, Methods and Framework

“…The concept of citizens is far from uniform and their motivation as well as information and communication needs, are understood differently. Examples are communities and groups, e.g., smaller communities, bigger municipalities or regional centres (Copes-Gerbitz et al, 2022), social-political movements coming together in local geopolitical actions (Leguia-Cruz et al, 2021), communities of practice, such as volunteer groups, (Robinson et al, 2018), neighbourhoods (McGee, 2011. Citizens' engagement will need political support from all levels of policy-makers for their involvement in the actual decision-making process (Gazzard et al, 2020), knowledge of standard operational procedures for different actions, especially in the suppression stage (Blanchi & Whittaker, 2018), information on fire preparedness and public safety (Miller et al, 2020), and trust building between professionals, decision-makers and community (Eckerberg & Buizer, 2017;Olsen & Sharp, 2013).…”

“…To fulfil the first objective, we have used previous research (Bandura, 2001;Copes-Gerbitz et al, 2022;Durkin et al, 2020;Gorriz-Mifsud et al, 2019;Eckerberg & Buizer, 2017) and our own data and have developed a tentative citizen engagement framework presented in figure 2. To fulfil the study's second objective, we presented preliminary results from our survey study, focus groups and parallel studies in the Silvanus project about the related citizens' needs and challenges, different groups of citizens, and related engagement methods, including designing a mobile app and also posters.…”

“…Research in different countries shows that involving populations living in hazardous areas and various groups of citizens in different stages of wildfire management helps to deal with disasters at early stages and either prevent them altogether or diminish the detrimental effect on many spheres (e.g., Xanthopoulos et al, 2022;Eckerberg & Buizer, 2017). Furthermore, citizens can become a significant additional resource in frequently occurring crises by lending their know-how, protecting property, helping in evacuation, joining voluntary forces and even by contributing to the restoration of the affected areas after the disaster (e.g., Copes-Gerbitz et al, 2022;Durkin et al, 2020;Gorriz-Mifsud et al, 2019).…”

“…Creating a disaster-resilient community has been discussed earlier, generally in different crises. However, in specific cases of wildfire, there is still a need for further investigations both on a more general, but also on local levels (Xanthopoulos et al, 2022;Copes-Gerbitz et al, 2022;Tedim et al, 2020;Singh & Kaushik, 2020;McGee, 2011;Gorriz-Misfud et al, 2019). Therefore, there is a need to investigate how to involve citizens in wildfire prevention and management and the methods and channels that can be used or developed for this purpose.…”

The contribution of Indigenous stewardship to an historical mixed‐severity fire regime in British Columbia, Canada

“…Wildfires of this magnitude will continue to challenge future suppression efforts (Wotton et al, 2017 ) and drastically increase expenditures (Stocks & Martell, 2016 ) without significant interventions to address existing risk (Johnston et al, 2020 ). In BC, the provincial government is the primary decision maker for fire management that has historically been focused on fire suppression (Copes‐Gerbitz, Hagerman, & Daniels, 2022 ; Nikolakis & Roberts, 2021 ), although ongoing challenges from recent wildfire seasons highlight the need to incorporate the expertise of Indigenous and local communities to guide proactive approaches to management (Copes‐Gerbitz, Dickson‐Hoyle, et al, 2022 ; Dickson‐Hoyle & John, 2021 ).…”