A handful of ranchers in inland British Columbia are preparing to graze their cattle in concentrated areas near homes and community infrastructure, where they will eat grasses that dry out during the summer and increase the risk of wildfires.
As part of a pilot program run by the BC Cattlemen’s Association, ranchers in Kelowna, Peachland, Summerland and Cranbrook will corral their cattle in specific areas for two to three weeks, general manager Kevin Boon said.
Livestock eat grasses that could serve as potential fire fuel, promoting new, green growth that doesn’t burn with the speed and intensity of grasses left to grow taller, drier, and more likely to set fire to brush and trees, he said. .
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“So if we can keep that fine fuel down … it won’t burn with the heat, the intensity or the speed and we have a better chance of controlling it.”
The BC government contributed $500,000 in 2019 to help launch the pilot project.
Managed grazing is not a solution to all fuel management challenges, the province said in a statement at the time, but “it is a powerful tool when used in combination with other methods, such as prescribed burning and selective harvesting of trees”.
Amanda Miller, an ecologist who works as a researcher on the grazing project, said the idea grew out of the severe bushfire seasons of 2017 and 2018, in which more than 12,000 square kilometers of forest and land each burned.
“We’ve found time and time again, when a fire starts, it often comes across a fence in a pasture that had just been grazed and the fire stops,” Miller said.
“So anecdotally, I think we’ve always known this, but of course you need real data and science to back up whatever recommendation you’re making.”
Boon said he hopes the pilot project can serve as a model for expansion in BC in partnership with the province, ranchers and local communities.
Over the past two seasons, each grazing site typically saw about a 30 percent reduction in herbaceous biomass, which equates to a substantial reduction in fine fuels, Miller said.
“That has an impact on things like the rate of spread and the intensity. It just lowers those metrics and makes it easier to put out a fire, if it’s moving slower and it’s not as hot.”
The program has a monitoring protocol to assess the effects of directed grazing on green and wooded environments, Miller noted.
“We have a lot of data to support the fact that what we are doing is not having a negative impact on the ecosystem,” he said.
That was still the case in an area where cattle were able to eat 40 percent of the grassy biomass last year, he added.
Cattle are also useful in grazing areas where forests have been thinned to reduce the risk of a dangerous crown fire, where the entire length of a tree is burned. Miller said it’s more difficult to fight and control a wildfire when the entire tree canopy is on fire.
Grasses flourish as more sunlight reaches the forest floor, but they dry out and turn to tinder, increasing the risk of a potential wildfire spark, he said.
“We use cattle to address that fine fuel concern, so you’ve dealt with wildfire risk in two different ways. You’ve removed some of the danger associated with those two-story decks, and then you have a complementary tool in directed grazing.”
After two years of below-average fire activity in BC, the 2021 season saw more than 1,600 fires scorch nearly 8,700 square kilometers of land.
Much of the village of Lytton was destroyed by fire just one day after temperatures in the community southwest of Kamloops reached a Canadian record high of 49.6 C. Fires also swept through properties between Kamloops and Vernon, and near from West Kelowna.
Boon said the scorching heat dome in late June dried out the land, creating the right conditions for a destructive wildfire season.
“We’ve seen these things happen before,” he said of the fires, extreme heat and flooding in BC last year. “Just not with the intensity and not on top of each other.”
This year’s provincial budget allocated $145 million for BC’s wildfire and emergency management services through 2025 with the goal of moving from a reactive to a proactive approach to wildfires, including increases in staffing throughout the anus.
At a news conference last month, the director of provincial operations for the wildfire service said BC needs a large-scale program to reduce risk, starting in backyards, moving into communities and spreading into forested land.
© 2022 The Canadian Press
Reference-globalnews.ca