Councillor Calls for More Forest Treatment Funding

By 250 News

Prince George, B.C.-  While  the City of Prince George was happy to hear it  has   been approved  for   a grant of just over $250 thousand dollars for  a forest fuel management project in the Parkridge Creek area, , there is concern about the future of that fund.

The money is coming from the Strategic Wildfire Prevention Fund.  The fund was established in 2004 with a base amount of $40 million dollars from the Ministry of Forests and Range from a $100 million dollar transfer payment from the Federal Government to deal with aspects of the Mountain Pine Beetle infestation.

The fund is administered by the Union of BC Municipalities, and program manager Brenda Gibson says the cupboard is almost bare “As at July 31, we had about $1.8 million remaining (after taking future year commitments into account)”.  She adds that the funding for Community Wildfire Protection Plans and prescriptions is expected to last until close to the end of the fiscal year which ends March 31, 2011.  The fund has been trying to stretch the dollars by  putting a $500 thousand dollar a year  cap  on grants handed out to any one  municipality or  community.

Over the years, Prince George has benefited from the UBCM funds as well as grants available through Natural resources Canada, the Job Creation Program and the Job Opportunity Program.  In all,  Prince George has  spent  $1.2 million of municipal  tax dollars to leverage a further $6.7 million  from  the various grant programs to  clear brush,  remove dead pine and do  prescription  treatments to wooded areas.  But with the UBCM fund running dry and the job creation  and job opportunity programs  no longer available,   funding for future work may be difficult to secure.

City Environment Manager Dan Adamson says   that as of the end of last year 191 hectares of  civic property within City limits had been  treated, and a further 372  hectares of Crown Lands within the City’s boundaries had been  dealt with.  He says he knows the costs for logging these areas are far and above the costs for conventional logging operations, but, there are extenuating circumstances “We often had to hire special equipment to access difficult areas.  Many of the areas that we had to deal with are in neighbourhoods, so conventional logging  methods wouldn’t work and we had  lots of expenses  in dealing with  the debris.” 

Adamson says the  debris had to be chipped on site and  trucked out as  it could not be burned, and  bio-mass users were not interested  in it because it was not kiln dried waste.  Adamson says the costs for logging  should  come down now that the  treatments are  moving out of neighbourhoods into wider open spaces. Still,  he says there is work to be done, and funding is needed to complete  it  “If we had full funding we could be done by early 2012.” 

The Parkridge Heights project  is the last of the  higher risk areas to be treated  in Prince George.  It  may only be 6.4 hectares but  Adamson says  it won’t be  a very easy job because of the  steep terrain  and proximity to  the homes that back on to the greenbelt that will be the subject of the project.

In the wake of a wildfire smoke advisory that lasted  a week, Councillor Dave Wilbur says the City must do everything it can to see that more funds are made available “In light of the evidence we have, there is a risk out there, I mean we’ve been  breathing it  for the past several weeks.  We need to get on top of both the Provincial and Federal governments  and tell them  they  need to do more.”

According to fund manager, Brenda Gibson, the Ministry of Forests and Range is working to identify options and confirm the process for continuing the provincial fuel management program. 

Since the funds were first made available in 2004,  Gibson  says 103 local government communities have initiated Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPP)  27 have initiated Pilot Projects and 149 have initiated Prescriptions and Operational Treatments.  First Nations are also developing CWPPs and many Bands are now working on prescriptions.  So far, 82 First Nations communities have completed or are completing CWPPs and 34 Bands have accessed funding for prescriptions and operational treatments.  To date, 42,000 hectares have been treated.   That is only a small fraction of the millions of hectares of forests which have been  impacted by the mountain pine beetle.

Councillor Wilbur wants to  see  some  action on funding  now, especially when the memories of the  wildfires are fresh “The fires out by Pelican Lake, they were very, very close.  Some people indicate that the fires got within about 50 kilometres of Prince George.  It would have taken just a bad wind to bring it home, so consequently  we really need to address this risk and the only way they can get at it is  through Provincial and Federal funds that deal with wildfires.”

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