‘Wildfires are now a crisis’: Indigenous communities knew how to care for the land; then the rest of us arrived

Even before history was recorded in Canada, First Nations, Métis and Inuit people practiced cultural burning, regular, carefully timed, low-intensity fires used to restore ecosystems, open travel routes, enhance food sources and reduce the fuel loads that now feed catastrophic wildfires.

Across B.C.’s Interior and Rocky Mountains, there were intentional fires “every five to 15 years” — “which meant that forests were much more wide open and they actually contained different species”.

“They are mostly sun tolerant species because you'd have a forest where the sun is actually reaching the ground beneath the canopy,” Grenz added.

However, settlers that first came to Canada brought with them colonial forestry practices that fundamentally altered those landscapes by suppressing cultural fire and transforming forests into dense, tree-dominated stands.