Bears and bison and a battle against beetles will benefit from prescribed burns in Banff this fall – if weather conditions allow them to go ahead.
Parks Canada has four fall prescribed fires on the books – an 800-hectate fire at Baker Creek, a 6,800-ha burn in the Dormer River Valley, a 100-ha fire in the Panther Valley and a small fire at Harry’s Hill near Lake Louise.
Jed Cochrane, fire and vegetation specialist for Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay, said the Baker Creek prescribed fire aims to control the spread of mountain pine beetle and provide an area to slow down an advancing wildfire in the future.
But, he said, one of the big objectives is to create key grizzly bear habitat and drawing grizzly bears away from the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks to an area that would be ripe with berries and other bear food in the future.
“It’s not a relatively high visitor use area right now and it’s a spot that would be great to have a whole bunch of berry crops 10 years away and draw those bears away from the train tracks,” he said.
“We’re seeing so many bears using the 2003 fire areas (in Kootenay National Park) now. If would be nice if we could have more of those on the landscape that work as a spot for grizzly bears to go and get food they need to persevere.”
The Baker Creek prescribed fire, located 10 kilometres east of Lake Louise, has been on the books for eight years.
Fireguard work began there in 2007, when park crews cut down a small area of forest along the southern edge of the area, closest to the Bow Valley. They also burned about 15 hectares of fireguard that year.
Cochrane said some small-scale burning will likely begin next week in advance of a larger prescribed burn, though the operation is dependent on weather conditions.
“It’s at relatively high elevation, which makes it challenging in fall and we’re up against snow at higher elevations,” he said.
“It’s been a cool and wet month and we’re really going to need a dry and warm fall.”
Parks Canada is also planning a 6,800-hectare fire in the Dormer River Valley and a 1,000-hectare prescribed burn in the Panther Valley – an area that would see the reintroduction of bison in 2017.
The reintroduction plan calls for 600 to 1,000 bison as a target population, but Parks Canada is starting with a five-year pilot project of 30 to 50 animals around the Panther and Dormer rivers on the east-central side of the park.
Rob Osiowy, fire management officer with Banff National Park, said the prescribed fire plans were developed long before the bison reintroduction plan.
“They have been planned independently of the bison project,” he said. “Granted, for the Panther meadows, bison is another species that prefers open grassy areas.”
Osiowy said the main objective of both fires is to improve year-round habitat for bighorn sheep, goats, grizzly bears, wolves and elk.
“The overarching goal is to improve wildlife habitat by restoring open forest and grasslands” he said.
“The other objectives include reducing the risk of wildfire that starts in the park that goes to neighbouring provincial lands, and reducing mountain pine beetle.”
The prescribed fire in the Panther meadows, about 60 km north of the Banff townsite, may happen as early as next week, if the dry weather persists.
Osiowy said the chances of pulling off the Dormer fire, to be burned about 45 km north of Banff, are not great.
“We’ve gotten quite a bit of rain on the east slopes,” he said. “We probably need two to thee weeks without any rain.”
The fourth prescribed fire on the books for this fall is near Harry Hill’s in Lake Louise.
Cochrane said crews did risk mitigation work in that area in the mid-2000s, taking out forest adjacent to the residential community and opening up meadows.
“If there was a wildfire coming to Lake Louise, it will hit a series of meadows and give us more opportunity to stop it,” he said.
