Image Credit: CFJC Today

By Adam Donnelly

WILDFIRE SAFETY

City tackles fuel management in Kamloops nature parks

Oct 9, 2020 | 3:42 PM

KAMLOOPS — Kenna Cartwright Nature Park — usually a calm, peaceful setting for a walk amongst the trees. However this week, that quiet has been replaced with the sound of chainsaws. The city is working to protect residences and infrastructure in and around the park.

“In Kenna Cartwright, we’ve got the radio communications towers up at the top,” Kirsten Wourms, Natural Resources Crew Lead with the City of Kamloops, says. “Of course, down below, we’ve got the school, we’ve got lots of houses. So our goal is to reduce the threat of wildfire in Kenna Cartwright Park.”

Fuel management isn’t as simple as it may sound. Crews try to maintain the balance that exists in the park while protecting wildlife habitats, native shrubs and bushes, and different tree species.

“We’re actually going in and looking at, well, we want to leave this species because there’s fewer of these. We want to make sure we leave some coarse, woody debris so there are houses for the little animals in there. We want to make sure wildlife trees are left for the birds,” Wourms said. “It’s definitely a really interesting mix of forest health, safety for people, and fire mitigation.”

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That mitigation work includes cutting branches off the tree trunks throughout the park, up to a height of about ten feet.

“The main reason for that is to make sure that when there’s a fire — if a fire gets going — it stays in the grass. A cool, quick fire that, when it goes through, has a hard time getting up into the crowns of the trees.”

The city hires professional foresters to come in to complete the work. For now, the materials those crews clean up are being stored in small piles — two metres by two metres — which the city plans to burn once the weather gets cold.

“We can only burn on good venting days,” Worms says. “Those days when we go to burn, the smoke goes straight up and dissipates. It’s not something that’s going to stick around Kamloops.”

Kenna Cartwright is a popular spot for many hikers and bikers, which means the fuel management crews get a lot of people curious about their work. While curiosity isn’t a crime, it’s important to give those crews space to do their work safely.

“As park users, if you’re going through and run into someone [working], just listen to whats going on. They’ll hold you back until the tree is down.”

Work in Kenna Cartwright is expected to continue until December. From there, crews will head across the valley into Pineview Valley for more fuel management.