The end lies in sight for the latest efforts to reduce wildfire risk in a Nakusp-area forest, thanks to hundreds of thousands of dollars in provincial funding support.
The Forestry Enhancement Society of BC (FESBC) announced April 24 that it would dish out millions in fuel treatment, which includes $779,248 for a 73-hectare chunk of the Nakusp & Area Community Forest (NACFOR).
Fire risk mitigation on NACFOR's Unit 5 has reached the end of Phase 1, with mechanical and hand-thinning treatment now set to progress with the help of FESBC's funding, according to communications specialist Skye Cunningham.
Unit 5, northeast of Nakusp by the Wensley Creek Cross Country Ski Trails, has been deemed important to treat as part of local wildland-urban interface, based on the village's 2008 Community Wildfire Protection Plan, Cunningham said.
"Unit 5 is one of the last ones treatment has been completed for," she said. "It has lots of values 鈥� recreation, for one, visuals and wildlife, domestic watershed."
Cunningham added that the focus for Unit 5 is on separating tree crowns and clearing excess understory, to lessen the ability for fire to spread between trees.
"That helps to create a more defensible space," she said.
The subsequent Phase 2 for Unit 5 now entails completing a "prescription" list of future wildfire mitigation activities to be carried out, which was drafted in the last two weeks of April, Cunningham said.
This latest nearly $800,000 in support for NACFOR comes from the $60 million that FESBC received from B.C.'s 2024 budget for three years of funding for community-focused wildfire mitigation.
NACFOR has operated since 2008 and oversees 9,192 hectares of community forest. It's owned by the Village of Nakusp, and has previously invested in wildfire mitigation for its Unit 5, including in 2023.
"The next sort of step is a resiliency plan, which I would say is a little more robust than the protection plan," Cunningham added.
Noel Ballard, Nakusp's FireSmart co-ordinator, gave props to the work NACFOR's already done over several years to make the community forest more resilient.
"It's not easy to do because there's a lot of red tape," Ballard said, describing the various approvals for fuel treatment. "Kudos to them."
Though much of NACFOR's land falls outside the wildland-urban interface "buffer" that Nakusp & District Volunteer Fire Department (NVFD) oversees, Ballard noted that any community forest within that buffer could potentially be a joint fuel treatment project with NVFD in the future.
He added that Nakusp has spent the last year reworking its Community Wildfire Protection Plan into a community wildfire resiliency plan, similar to what Revelstoke now has. More widely, Nakusp will be collaborating this year with Regional District of Central Kootenay to get wildfire mitigation work and funding in place for 2026 across Area K, which includes Burton, Fauquier and Edgewood.
Last March, 14 NVFD members completed S-100 and S-185 wildfire training. In April, various crew members underwent water supply, structure protection and "Engine Boss" training. They're also attending structural firefighter training Thursday, May 8, in Oliver.
Thanks to Columbia Basin Trust funding, the department has additionally set up a trailer with two large pumps, four large portable water tanks "and all the equipment necessary to supply water to areas with water deficiencies," NVDF shared on Facebook.
Ballard pointed to the summer 2024 wildfire near Silverton, which he had a first-hand look at himself, as a strong and successful example of why forest fuel treatment in the wildland-urban interface in vital.
"The fire intensity was reduced to the point where not all the trees were destroyed," he recalled. "That's the ultimate goal 鈥� to protect the ecological integrity of the forest."
