The province is revamping its wildlife strategy to better protect communities from wildfire and to take into account the impacts of global warming, B.C. Forests Minister Pat Bell announced Thursday.
However, Bell had no hard details on how the new strategy would be funded.
One of the other measures is a call to further reduce wildfire risk around communities and public buildings through fuel management. A provincial program that provided $37 million in funding to the Union of B.C. Municipalities is expected to be exhausted this year.
Bell said he had no announcement of more funding, but added the province is having discussions with other levels of government on the issue.
A key component of the strategy is a measure to ensure that plans - including land-use plans, forestry plans and community plans - adequately consider the management of wildfire to reduce risks.
Bell, who unveiled the new wildfire strategy in a 22-page document, said while the measure is a policy for now, he has not ruled out legislation.
Bell, the MLA for Prince George-Mackenzie, noted that increasing the focus on wildfire management was also important because of the potential impacts of global warming. Bell noted that some recent forecasting shows that temperatures in the northern hemisphere could increase as much as 4 C to 5 C by 2050.
"We have one of the best wildfire fighting programs in the world, but as our climate changes, so must our management approach to protect communities and support vibrant forests," said Bell.
"This strategy will help us strike a balance between proactive fire management and suppression, and focus our firefighting efforts in key areas, while capitalizing on the ecological benefits of naturally occurring fires," added Bell, referring to another plank of the strategy to allow some natural fires to run their course.
The strategy also calls for using controlled burns to encourage to manage fuel build up in forests.
More than 1,600 wildfires consumed nearly 338,000 hectares of forest and grassland during the 2010 wildfire season, resulting in several evacuation alerts and orders across the Cariboo and Northwest.
As of Sept. 21, more than $200 million has been spent on fire suppression.
Fires have cut a wide swath through north and central B.C. this year, burning more than 300,000 hectares.
While the fire hot zone was located in the Southern Interior in 2009, this year it moved farther north, fueled by extremely dry conditions in the vast beetle-killed pine forests in this region.
Historically, wildfires have burned about 500,000 hectares of land in B.C. annually, however, that area has shrunk to an average of less than 100,000 hectares in recent years as the province fights fires.
This has altered the natural fire cycle and contributed to fuel buildup as forests age.
