Fund clearing, says NDP critic
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Updated: July 28, 2009 11:04 AM
The B.C. government should provide 100 per cent of the funds needed to remove dead trees and other forest fuel from around communities, says NDP forest critic Norm MacDonald.
MacDonald said the B.C. government’s own figures show only $17 million has been spent on the problem, less than a quarter of the $75 million recommended in an independent report produced after the destructive Okanagan area fires of 2003. The Kelowna area has again become the focus of intense forest firefighting efforts, with homes lost and people evacuated.
The province has a cost-sharing program with the Union of B.C. Municipalities that provides half the funding for interface fire protection, or 75 per cent in the case of pine beetle-killed trees. By the end of June, about half of the $37 million provincial fund had been applied.
MacDonald cited research by forest economist Tom Hobby that concluded only about two per cent of interface fire areas around communities have been brushed and thinned to protect residential areas from fast-spreading fires.
Hobby said so much fuel has accumulated due to decades of fire suppression that prescribed burns often can’t be used.
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