It isn’t every day we hear that humans have done a good job with environmental issues. But when it comes to fighting fires, we have. In fact, we’ve done too well.

At the beginning of a new trail in Kootenay Park called the Redstreak Restoration Trail, there is a photo of the Redstreak area in 1906 as well as one of the area today. The difference is striking. The area is far more segregated today with parts of the land dedicated to golf courses and others far thicker with trees and vegetation than they were prior to large scale settlement.

“We’ve done such and amazing job of fighting forest fires over the last hundred years, we’ve totally overachieved. It should be one of our national sports, right up there with hockey,” said Omar McDadi, Communications Officer for Parks Canada.

Though pleasing to the eye, today’s layout has posed a challenge for some of the plants and wildlife in the area. For example, the area is home to 10 per cent of all the bighorn sheep in the province. But the heavily wooded areas leave little room for native grasses which are the primary diet of the animals that have become living symbols of the Village of Radium Hot Springs and the surrounding area.

With the conditions in the area at the turn of the last century in mind, Parks Canada staff are hoping to open up the area for migrating species and bring back some of the native vegetation that support them. The easiest way to do it; fire.

By lighting controlled fires beginning at the top and sides of Redstreak Mountain and moving down and in to the centre of the 250 hectare area, they will be simulating the natural fires that the area has experienced over the centuries.

The end result will be a more open area full of grasses and smaller vegetation.

“The whole idea is to restore the landscape to what it was like about 100 years ago,” said Omar. “We think there’s a fire history in this area, roughly every 25 to 30 years or so there would be a fire on this landscape.”

Those fires would have been much smaller scale ones than the fires that have been experienced in the Okanagan and nearer to the coast over the summer.

Another planned burn like this was done a few years ago with great success. According to Omar, the numbers of sheep grazing through the area have increased since the burn, to 150 spotted last winter.

“Three weeks after the (planned) fires, this landscape was as green and lush as it’s ever been,” he said.

Other animals that have benefited from these burns include the American badger and black bear that, along with the sheep, find it easier to move through the grasslands and find food and shelter.

The other goal of the planned burns is to limit the chances of more catastrophic wildfires.

“We’re so close to the Village of Radium here,” said Omar, “prior to removing some of this wood and thinning these forests, there was a lot of fuel building up just waiting to catch fire and on hot, dry summers like the one we’ve just had it just takes one lightning strike.”

For now, the staff are waiting for the right weather before sending up helicopters to begin setting the area ablaze. With an operation that runs about $100,000 to perform, they want to make sure it goes without a hitch and in the safest way possible.

Parks Canada have already put out notices to local residents about smoke. Omar said that, although the smoke may be a nuisance, an unexpected forest fire would be far worse.