Wildfire and the Municipal Forest Reserve

Learning from our Mistakes

When European settlers arrived in North America, they found a vast wilderness whose “green dark forest was too silent to be real,” as Gordon Lightfoot’s evocative lyrics remind us. For millennia, First Nations had lived gently on this land, respecting and accepting its natural rhythms, and preserving for posterity its diverse and abundant fish and wildlife.

Wildfire was a naturally recurring and vital force for renewal and regeneration, usually triggered by lightning but also employed by Indigenous communities to restore nutrients and enable vegetative successions that benefit humans and wildlife alike. Wisdom acquired over generations of quiet stewardship held the Earth in balance, a self-sustaining ecosystem that thrived.

But as technological barriers fell, man turned his back on Nature. The arrogance of industrial forestry, and the short-term profits it garnered for distant investors, triumphed. Ever-larger clearcuts, shrinking streamside buffers and ever-shorter rotations created a fire- and erosion-prone landscape of denuded slopes and even-aged tree plantations. Profit-driven exports of unprocessed raw logs ignored sustained yield restraints and stole the futures of dedicated woodworkers including more than 350 skilled jobs lost when the Crofton mill closed in 2025. Intensive logging of steep and unstable slopes triggered landslides and riverbank erosion, flooding low-lying communities such as the Xuleltxw (Halalt) First Nation’s Reserve in 2024.

Against a backdrop of global warming and a century of indiscriminate fire suppression, forest and urban-interface mismanagement have unleashed firestorms unprecedented in their ferocity, speed and destruction. The Oakland Hills wildfire of 1991 took 25 lives and destroyed 3,200 homes. Many were burned to death in their cars trying to escape through gridlocked city streets.

The lessons that should have been learned from the Oakland Hills fire were not. The loss of life and destruction of communities from urban interface wildfires continues unchecked.

Ignoring years of warnings that evacuation routes were inadequate, the California community of Paradise was overrun by the Camp Fire in 2018, leaving 85 dead including many caught in their blocked vehicles. More than 18,000 structures were incinerated, and more than 20,000 residents left homeless. A lovely town of 26,000 residents was reduced overnight to a smoking ruin. The Lytton fire of 2021 razed 90% of the town and killed two.

Another 12 souls died and 6,800 structures were destroyed in the Palisades, California wildfire of 2025, because fire hydrants ran dry. Near the Angeles National Forest, more than 6,000 homes were destroyed and 19 persons burned to death in the Eaton, California wildfire. Many were unable to escape the flames due to gridlocked evacuation.

What North Cowichan Can Learn

We can learn from these tragedies by managing North Cowichan’s six municipal forests for habitat conservation, and rejecting unwise urban sprawl proposed along their boundaries. Our scientists tell us that mature forests retain precipitation in their heavy forest cover and soils, keeping streams high in the summer and preventing flooding and channel scour in the winter. Industrial-scale logging and roading, by contrast, destabilize steep slopes by removing protective forest cover and killing the root systems that hold soils in place. Landslides, erosion, impaired water quality and lost fish and wildlife habitat follow.

Clear-cut logging also creates high fire risks by replacing shady, fire-resistant mature forests with even-aged stands of young trees that ignite easily and burn rapidly. The UBC Forestry Department’s Strategic Forest Planning Review commissioned by North Cowichan found that trees 5 to 40 years old—as found on lands recently clearcut—have the highest wildfire risk; mature forests have the lowest. Many of the fires that have recently threatened our community, such as the Mt. Underwood fire last summer, and Mt. Prevost fire this July, burned through cut-over areas.

The public cherishes our beautiful and bountiful Six Mountains. In 2023, they voted 4 to 1—76% to 17%—to manage these forests for conservation to protect them for recreation, scenery, watershed and wildlife habitat.

Let’s keep development away from our irreplaceable Six Mountains.