BANFF – Several hundred fire-prone coniferous trees have been chopped down on private residential property and on public lands around municipal buildings, parks and critical infrastructure in the Banff townsite to help reduce the threat of wildfire.
Town of Banff officials say 329 trees were removed from public land around municipal buildings and critical infrastructure in 28 different locations, including Town Hall, Banff Child Care Centre and the wastewater treatment plant, while 300 permits have been issued for removing coniferous trees on private property. Hundreds more trees were taken out on the perimeter of town.
Since embers can travel kilometres, Town of Banff officials say they are applying FireSmart principles to remove all combustible material from 1.5 metres around municipal buildings and select conifer trees within 10 metres of municipal buildings.
“We have good news. Phase 1 of the Town FireSmart vegetation management is virtually complete. … We have removed 329 trees around critical infrastructure,” said Paul Godfrey, director of operations for the Town of Banff during an April 14 governance and finance committee meeting.
“In addition to that, we have executed a contract to start phase 2, which is going around the critical infrastructure and removing the vegetation in the appropriate zone – within 1.5 metres everything combustible will come out.”
Wildfire remains the top-rated hazard within and around the Bow Valley, with residents on high alert following recent record-breaking fire seasons in Canada and the devastating wildfire that destroyed one-third of Jasper’s buildings last summer.
Banff council directed almost $1.4 million be spent on FireSmarting the townsite this year, including forest thinning on the perimeter of town and cutting trees and removing combustible vegetation around municipal buildings, parks and critical infrastructure.
An additional $100,000 is being spent to update the wildfire tactical response plan and purchase more equipment for structure protection, plus almost $100,000 worth of rebates for rooftop sprinklers, roof replacements and tree removal are available to property owners to FireSmart their homes and yards.
Outland Forestry Services was hired to thin forests, remove trees, branches and all deadfall from almost 20 hectares of Town-managed land, including around the Banff Centre campus and to Surprise Corner, around hotels on Tunnel Mountain and in north Banff neighbourhoods like Tatanga Ridge and Ti’nu.
“We managed with the moisture that came at the end of the season to get not only all the vegetation removed but all the burning completed as well,” said Katherine Severson, the Town’s director of emergency management and protective services.
The Town of Banff, however, was unsuccessful in securing $200,000 under the Forest Resource Improvement Association of Alberta (FRIAA) granting program for planned work to re-treat about 17.2 hectares of land, which was planned for winter 2025-26.
“We have come to understand anecdotally that no communities to our knowledge have been successful in receiving a grant for a re-treatment,” said Severson.
“Our early assumption is that re-treatment is not going to be included this year due to the enormous demand in the FRIAA grants.”
FireSmart rebates offered
The Town of Banff has seen an uptick in applications for the tree removal, rooftop sprinkler and rooftop replacement financial incentive programs.
Severson said there have been at least 58 trees removed under the residential tree removal program, though that number is likely higher as requests for the $250 per property rebate continue to be approved.
“I think you can say it’s been busy, very busy, and thank you to the planning department because they’ve been facilitating permits and making it really easy for residents to do so,” she said.
Severson said the Town of Banff has filled requests for rooftop sprinkler systems for 20 residents on the waitlist from 2024 and there are another 50 requests this year. The Town offers the sprinklers at a discounted rate of $65 from the regular retail price of $240, with the kit including two sprinkler heads, hoses and mounting devices.
“We just want to remind everyone the sprinkler request goes hand-in-hand with having a completed home assessments and as of last week, we have restarted our home assessments,” she said.
Mayor Corrie DiManno thanked the community for stepping up to help with FireSmart initiatives.
“I think it demonstrates how seriously we are all taking this and that we are in this together and I really appreciate everyone doing their part,” she said.
“I want to continue to encourage folks to stay as informed and as ready as possible in the event of a worst-case scenario.”
Severson said a project manager has been selected to oversee the regional Bow Valley-wide evacuation modelling project.
“This regional project is largely about our main transportation corridors and impacts that those would experience should multiple communities need to be evacuated in the Bow Valley,” she said.
The Town of Banff’s engineering department and emergency services have recently partnered with the University of Calgary engineering faculty on research around mass transit and mass transportation specific to evacuation in the event of a disaster or emergency.
“I don’t have any specific updates yet as to the outcomes of that research, but it’s exciting to know they’re looking at the Town of Banff and going to be providing some feedback and some recommendations to us around the movement of mass transit during evacuations,” said Severson.
She said the Town of Banff has recently had the opportunity to partner formally with Parks Canada’s new emergency manager for the Banff National Park field unit.
“That person was the emergency manager for Lake Louise, Kootenay, Yoho, but they have also been assigned to now encompass the Banff field unit,” he said.
“This is a very significant development for us, in partnership with Parks Canada.”
Call for community forest zones
A former head of Parks Canada’s national prescribed fire program and a leader in fire management for almost four decades with the federal agency is proposing a new approach to mitigating the “critical danger” of wildfire in the Bow Valley.
Cliff White, who was key in launching Parks Canada’s prescribed fire program across the country in the 1980s, is pushing for establishment of so-called community forest zones around towns like Banff and Canmore.
Under such an agreement, he said the municipalities would assume the primary responsibility for managing fire risk to a distance of five to 10 km from their boundaries and would hire foresters and FireSmart specialists.
“Likely working within the municipal fire departments, and partially subsidized by harvesting wood within their community zone, their task would be to reduce risk and to formulate and rehearse action plans for when wildfires occur,” said White.
“Many towns have already achieved exceptional FireSmart standards within their boundaries. The ‘community forest’ approach would allow these communities to extend this fire risk reduction work to a scale where it can make a substantial difference.”
While Indigenous burning once maintained meadows, shrub fields and thrifty young trees in the valley bottoms and travel corridors of western Canadian forests, White said ongoing fire suppression by Parks Canada and provincial agencies is allowing forests to age to a “critical state.”
He said forest cover is now dense, and the forest floor is covered with deep layers of dead and decomposing wood.
He said when ignited by lightning, arson or an accidental source, these forests explode into conflagrations that destroy communities – Kelowna (2003), Slave Lake (2011), Fort McMurray (2016), Lytton (2021), Shuswap Lake (2023) and Jasper (2024).
“Disastrous burns often ignited from two to 10 km away from the towns but spread rapidly with dry weather and high winds. They usually occur during extreme periods of drought when the regional wildfire agencies are already overwhelmed,” he said.
“With so many communities in their regions, it is impossible for any agency to plan and deliver the custom pre-fire risk reduction – mechanical forest thinning, fuel-break construction, prescribed burning – that each community needs.”
The Town of Canmore, in partnership with the Municipal District of Bighorn and Kananaskis Improvement District, and with support from Alberta Forestry and Parks, have worked together to begin construction of the Bow Valley community fireguard. With construction occurring in phases over the next three to four years, the large-scale fireguard will extend from the east gates of Banff National Park to Dead Man’s Flats on both sides of the Bow River.
In Banff National Park, large firebreaks are under construction in Lake Louise and on Tunnel Mountain near the Banff townsite. A large break was logged at Protection Mountain along the Bow Valley Parkway last year.
White said the standard fire disaster these days is a wildfire that starts about three to 10 kilometres from a community, which then fans out to be more than one kilometre wide with high intensities and a shower of embers “as it burns into the high values at risk.”
He said this usually happens in about four hours to three days and “overwhelms all firefighting forces.”
“Often, there are either few outside resources available due to other fires, or not enough time to bring them in due to rapid rates of spread, so the towns and communities need to be more prepared for all contingencies,” he said.
“For success, it must be the local municipal firefighters that have the best knowledge of their local values at risk, and how to use the fuel breaks, etc., that surround their community, and where the weaknesses are in the community itself. This local knowledge can then be passed to an incident command team and other firefighting resources when – or if – they arrive on time.”
Following a Bow Valley wildfire interagency committee public meeting in Banff in February, White said it is excellent news to hear the landscape-level approach is being taken in recognition of the extreme danger.
He said it is also great news to hear the centrepiece for mitigating danger is to apply FireSmart standards to houses, buildings, towns, municipal parks inside town boundaries, power lines, and outlying commercial areas.
However, White said he is concerned that failure to recognize that fuel breaks – the “log-it and leave-it” approach won’t work unless they are continually maintained over time, which history shows has not been the case.
“We’ve been through three cycles of this since the 1800s,” he said.
“These fuel breaks have not been maintained, rarely reduce risk in surrounding forest, build a false sense of community security, and have almost all now partially overgrown and are more dangerous than if they were natural forest.”
White said the ‘community forest’ approach is being applied in numerous areas in British Columbia and Alberta to make local citizens and businesses – oil patch, forestry, recreation, agriculture, etc. – more responsible for integrated, long-term regional community to park FireSmart work.
He said the ‘community forest’ approach may be difficult to apply in the Bow Valley due to the national and international significance of parks and protected areas, so other options for long-term solutions for funding fuel break operations and maintenance need to be considered.
“I personally believe that a joint Canada-Alberta-Banff-Canmore Community Forest Agreement is the optimal way to go, but that may be for future generations to legislate, and in the interim, a foundation might be able to achieve some of the same objectives,” he said.
“My guess is that many towns will need to burn down at least a couple times before our culture comes to grips with the understanding that we, like those who were here before us, are not separate from nature.”
