Wildfire (forest fire) season in British Columbia has become a dominant feature of both public discourse and lived experience. From the Okanagan Valley to Vancouver Island, smoke events, evacuation alerts, and destroyed property have become common elements of late summer life. Often accompanied by emotionally charged language—“record-breaking,” “unprecedented,” “catastrophic”—the media narrative positions wildfires as escalating threats that require urgent technological and political solutions.
But are these events truly new in scale or frequency? Or are we witnessing the resurfacing of ecological processes that have long been central to BC’s natural systems? Are wildfires genuinely “worse,” or are they simply intersecting more frequently with our modern infrastructure, denser populations, and altered landscapes?
This article provides a comprehensive, fact-based analysis of wildfire history in British Columbia, exploring the historical role of fire in forest ecosystems, the legacy of colonial fire suppression, the ecological necessity of regular burning, the perception-versus-reality gap, and the interplay between fire, climate change, and urban development. It concludes with a call for balanced, informed coexistence with wildfire—rooted not in fear, but in ecological fluency and historical awareness.
Whether you’re a homeowner, researcher, policy-maker, or simply curious about BC’s fire ecology, this is the context you won’t get from a headline.
Wildfires as an Ancient Ecological Force in British Columbia
Long before modern settlements, long before roads, and long before satellite monitoring, fire played a vital and natural role in shaping British Columbia’s landscapes. Wildfires in this region are not a recent phenomenon—they are ancient, cyclical, and essential for ecosystem maintenance and biodiversity.
Historical evidence from dendrochronology (tree-ring data), sediment charcoal analysis, and Indigenous oral histories indicate that low-to-moderate intensity fires regularly moved through BC’s grasslands, forests, and highlands. These fires were often sparked by lightning during the dry summer months and were not considered disasters, but rather vital elements of a functioning ecosystem.
Fire-adapted species, such as Pseudotsuga menziesii (Douglas fir), Pinus contorta (lodgepole pine), and Pinus ponderosa (ponderosa pine), not only tolerate fire—they depend on it. Their life cycles are closely tied to fire events that clear out dense undergrowth, expose mineral soil, and release seeds from serotinous cones sealed with resin that melts only under intense heat.
In short, the ecological baseline in BC includes regular fire. The absence of fire is the anomaly.
Indigenous Fire Stewardship: A Tradition of Controlled Burning
For over 10,000 years, Indigenous peoples across what is now British Columbia have employed a nuanced, place-based understanding of fire as a land management tool. Far from passively coexisting with wildfire, many Indigenous communities actively used cultural burns—intentional, low-intensity fires applied to specific areas under controlled conditions.
These burns served multiple purposes: enhancing game habitat, improving berry and medicinal plant yields, reducing pest pressure, maintaining open meadows for travel and ceremony, and minimizing the risk of larger, uncontrolled fires by managing fuel accumulation.
Groups such as the Secwépemc, Nlaka’pamux, Stó:lō, Tsilhqot’in, and Syilx practiced fire stewardship with sophisticated timing, scale, and frequency, often aligning with seasonal cycles, plant phenology, and community needs. Fire knowledge was transmitted through generations, grounded in observation and relational ethics with the land.
The suppression of Indigenous burning practices following European colonization—through restrictive laws, criminalization, and the marginalization of Indigenous land governance—has had direct and measurable ecological consequences.
Colonial Fire Suppression and the Rise of Vulnerability
By the early 20th century, Canadian forest policy was grounded in European land management philosophies that viewed wildfire as inherently destructive. The newly formed BC Forest Branch and, later, the BC Wildfire Service, adopted policies aimed at full suppression of all fires, regardless of ecological role.
These policies coincided with expanding industrial logging, railway construction, and the growth of towns and cities near forested areas. Fire was seen as a threat to economic assets—timber, infrastructure, and real estate—and not as a vital ecological process.
The outcome of these policies has been the accumulation of fire-prone fuels in BC’s forests. Decades of fire exclusion allowed deadwood, aging trees, and thick underbrush to build up unnaturally, creating highly combustible landscapes. When fire does eventually occur, it is no longer low and cleansing—it is intense, fast-moving, and harder to control.
Ironically, the very attempts to “protect” forests have made them more vulnerable to the kind of large-scale, high-severity wildfires that dominate today’s news coverage.
Fire Suppression, Forest Decline, and the Mountain Pine Beetle
A prominent example of fire’s ecological role is its relationship to pest outbreaks. The mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) epidemic that swept through interior BC in the early 2000s was facilitated by the absence of regular fire.
Under historical fire regimes, aging and drought-stressed pine trees—the beetles’ preferred hosts—would be periodically thinned out by fire. Instead, a century of suppression created monoculture-like stands of overmature lodgepole pine, providing ideal conditions for beetle proliferation.
Fire would have reduced the continuity of suitable habitat for beetles, broken up landscape-scale infestations, and accelerated regeneration. The outbreak, which destroyed more than 18 million hectares of forest, is one of many examples of how fire suppression has cascading effects on ecological health.
Forest Regeneration and the Biology of Fire-Dependent Species
Many tree species in British Columbia have evolved with fire not as a threat, but as a trigger for renewal. Lodgepole pine is a textbook case—its serotinous cones remain sealed until exposed to high temperatures, ensuring that seed release is synchronized with post-fire conditions. These conditions—sun-exposed, ash-rich mineral soil with little competition—are ideal for seedling establishment.
Other species, such as Douglas fir and ponderosa pine, have thick bark that insulates them from surface fires, allowing mature trees to survive and continue growing even after multiple fire cycles.
Fire also promotes plant diversity. Without periodic disturbance, shade-tolerant species and thick underbrush can outcompete native herbs, grasses, and shrubs. Fire resets this competitive balance, maintaining open spaces that benefit pollinators, grazing animals, and culturally important plant species.
In the absence of fire, these systems become homogenized, dense, and ecologically stagnant.
Why Wildfires Appear More Destructive Today
The scale and intensity of wildfires today are real, but their destructive nature is largely due to the increased human presence in wildfire-prone zones.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, fires often burned hundreds of thousands of hectares with minimal infrastructure loss or public concern. Today, the expansion of the wildland-urban interface—where houses meet forest—means more property, more people, and more economic value exposed to fire.
Simultaneously, air quality monitoring, live satellite imaging, and 24/7 news coverage amplify the perception of threat. A fire that once burned unnoticed now triggers mass evacuations and intense public scrutiny.
The fire may not be new—but what’s in its path is.
The Role of Climate Change: Accelerant, Not Root Cause
Climate change is undeniably influencing fire regimes across western North America. Rising temperatures, earlier snowmelt, and prolonged summer droughts all contribute to drier fuels and longer fire seasons.
However, to attribute today’s fire behavior solely to climate change is to overlook the foundational role of forest mismanagement, fire suppression, and land-use change. Climate is an accelerant—not the origin—of our current fire challenges.
Understanding this distinction is crucial for policy development. Focusing exclusively on emissions reduction, while neglecting landscape-level fuel management and Indigenous fire restoration, will not solve the wildfire problem.
Technological Innovation: Tools, Not Solutions
Advances in wildfire detection, prediction, and response—such as AI-powered sensors, thermal imaging, and digital risk dashboards—are valuable additions to our toolkit. Institutions like UBC Okanagan are pioneering these efforts.
But these technologies are inherently reactive. They do not reduce fuel loads, restore degraded ecosystems, or reintroduce culturally informed fire cycles. They can alert us to fire, but they cannot prevent the conditions that make fire dangerous.
Technology must be paired with ecological restoration, policy reform, and community-level fire preparedness.
Rebuilding a Coherent Relationship with Fire
British Columbia is not under siege by fire. It is reckoning with a century of fire exclusion, ecological imbalance, and rapid development into historically fire-adapted landscapes. Wildfires are not new; they are essential, ancient processes that we have misunderstood and mismanaged.
To move forward, we must:
- Recognize fire as a necessary ecological force, not a foreign threat
- Support Indigenous-led fire stewardship and cultural burning programs
- Reduce our exposure by rethinking where and how we build in fire zones
- Use technology responsibly, in service of proactive land management
- Acknowledge that our fear of fire is often a result of short historical memory
The path to wildfire resilience is not about domination or elimination. It is about literacy, humility, and alignment with the land’s natural rhythms.
What’s your experience with wildfires in British Columbia? Were you affected by evacuation orders, prescribed burns, or smoke events? Do you come from a family or community with traditional fire knowledge? We want to hear your story. Share your perspective in the comments below.
Resource Links
Firesmart Program
BC Parks Advisory
Arcgis Emergency Map
Emergency Info BC
BC Wildfire Service
BC Wildfire Map
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BC Wildfire iPhone App
BC Wildfire Android App
BC Wildfire Wikipedia