Transforming fire governance in British Columbia, Canada: an emerging vision for coexisting with fire

Abstract

The dominant command and control fire governance paradigm is proven ineffective at coping with modern wildfire challenges. In response, jurisdictions globally are calling for transformative change that will facilitate coexisting with future fires. Enacting transformative change requires attention to historical governance attributes that may enable or constrain transformation, including diverse actors, objectives, worldviews of fire, decision-making processes and power, legislation, and drivers of change. To identify potential pathways for transformative change, we systematically examined the history of fire governance attributes in British Columbia (BC), Canada (until 2020), a region that has experienced seven catastrophic fire seasons in the twenty-first century. By reviewing 157 provincial historical documents and interviewing 19 fire experts, we delineated five distinct governance eras that demonstrated the central role of government actors with decision-making power shaping fire governance through time, superseding First Nations fire governance starting in the 1870s. The emerging vision for transformation proposed by interviewees focuses on the need for increased decision-making power for community actors, yet legacies of entrenched government power and organizational silos between fire and forestry continue to constrain transformation. Although progress to overcome constraints has been made, we argue that enabling transformative change in fire governance in BC will require intervention by the provincial government to leverage modern drivers of change, including recent catastrophic fire seasons and reconciliation with First Nations.

A century of transformation: fire regime transitions from 1919 to 2019 in southeastern British Columbia, Canada

“…Fire was also used to produce foods and medicines including wild tobacco, a regionally cultivated ceremonial plant with important spiritual and cultural value (Smith 1984;Mah 2000;Munson 2006). Indigenous fire stewardship was systematically discouraged during the late 19th-century, driven by colonial policies (e.g., Indian Act, Indian Reserves and Residential Schools), which sought to weaken and eliminate Indigenous cultures (Copes-Gerbitz et al 2022). Dendrochronological evidence indicates a disruption in fire frequency after 1940, which is attributed to the displacement of Indigenous peoples onto reserves, colonial fire exclusion policies, and a period of cool and wet climate (Daniels et al 2011;Chavardès and Daniels 2016;Greene 2021).…”

“…Intentional or accidental settler ignitions associated with resource extraction (e.g., hillslope burning to expose mineral or precious metal veins, loggers using yarding machinery and locomotives to convey logs to sawmills) were also common during this period, contributing to the large fires of the era (Parminter 1981;Drushka 1998). As repeat low-severity Indigenous burning was replaced by incidental settler ignitions, large portions of the landscape burned, but the Indigenous land stewardship and governance systems that targeted ecological and cultural objectives were lost (Copes-Gerbitz et al 2022).…”

“…Following WWII, several technologies were adopted to fight the war on wildfire, with the integration of military incident command systems (Dague and Hirami 2015) and technology (e.g., aerial imagery, heavy machinery, chainsaws, and an aerial attack fleet) (Dombeck et al 2004;Copes-Gerbitz et al 2022). The cool and wet conditions of the 1940s and 1950s (Appendix A; Morgan et al 2008;Meyn et al 2013) provided time for newly augmented fire suppression systems and technology to develop, as personnel and equipment became widely integrated.…”

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

“…In contrast, Indigenous fire stewardship as a driver of fire regimes is not well represented, in part because of an assumption that Indigenous stewardship did not influence landscape‐level fire patterns (Hoffman et al, 2022 ; Leonard et al, 2020 ; Roos, 2020 ). Failure to consider the contribution of Indigenous stewardship to fire regimes at different scales may overlook the importance of ignition sources as a bottom‐up fire regime driver (Krebs et al, 2010 ) and result in interpretations and management recommendations that favor priorities of non‐Indigenous peoples (Copes‐Gerbitz, Hagerman, & Daniels, 2022 ; Hoffman et al, 2022 ; Prichard et al, 2021 ).…”

“…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 ).…”