Thousand-year-old practices are at the core of wildfire mitigation efforts in the Westbank First Nation Community Forest. - The Discourse
Aaron Hemens March 2, 2022
For nearly six months in 2021, the Mount Law wildfire near West Kelowna scorched 976 hectares of land. Igniting approximately two kilometres away from the municipality on Aug. 15, the wildfire burned for over 19 days before crews contained the spread on Sept. 3.
Miraculously, when the smoke cleared, Central Okanagan Emergency Operations reported the fire inflicted significant damage to only one structure.
Favourable weather and dedicated firefighters managed to control the blaze, but the groundwork for keeping the area relatively unscathed was laid by Westbank First Nation (WFN) years before the first tree caught flame.
Hand-treatment mitigation work — informed by traditional practices — conducted between 2015 and 2016 in an area of the Westbank First Nation Community Forest (WFN-CF) ultimately slowed the Mount Law wildfire’s spread and reduced its intensity. This helped to prevent it from extending into the neighbouring community of upper Glenrosa. Crews at Ntityix Resources LP (NRLP), a WFN-owned company responsible for managing the community forest, carried out the mitigation work.
This boots-on-the-ground approach to wildfire mitigation is a part of syilx (Okanagan) culture and has been around for “years and years and years,” according to WFN councillor and NRLP president Jordan Coble.
“It’s been alive since the beginning, and it’s something that we’ve been doing for thousands upon thousands of years,” Coble said…
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