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In British Columbia, Canada, Community Forests have emerged as leaders in addressing wildfire risk around communities and the forests on which they depend by employing innovative solutions through planning, fuels treatments, building capacity for wildfire response, and homeowner preparedness and community outreach. However, limited financial capacity, a lack of operational and scientific expertise, community expectations and the limitations of existing planning and legislative frameworks continue to pose challenges to successful proactive wildfire management.

As part of our research project Wildfire: Community-based solutions to a wicked problem, funded by a Community Solutions grant from the Peter Wall Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia, we interviewed 26 Community Forest managers throughout BC in 2019 to better understand their approaches to addressing wildfire risk. These Community Forests represent a diversity of forest and fuel types, governance arrangements, and jurisdictions, and their responses provide key insights for supporting proactive wildfire management near communities.

Community Forests identified three priorities for future wildfire management, including refocusing management with a ‘fire lens,’ managing fire (including prescribed and cultural burning) for landscape resilience, and scaling up collaboration to the landscape level.

Moving forward, Community Forest managers identified three overarching priorities for wildfire management in BC:

1) Refocusing management with a ‘fire lens’: Wildfire management is increasingly becoming a priority and guiding objective for Community Forests. Managers highlighted the need to revisit existing management plans and policies in light of improved knowledge on wildfire risk, and for greater flexibility, particularly regarding fuels treatments. This means explicitly prioritizing wildfire management as a value and objective within forest tenures.

2) Managing fire for landscape resilience: Restoring fire to the land as an ecological and cultural process, and adaptively managing in the face of ongoing climate change, is a priority for many Community Forests. Prescribed burning is highlighted as it can achieve multiple objectives, including ecological restoration, cultural revitalization, and hazard reduction.

3) Scaling up collaboration: Managers emphasized the importance of scaling up areas treated and planning at a landscape level. This requires broadening the focus of community wildfire protection beyond the current 2 km designated WUI boundary. Increasing collaboration among communities, tenure holders, government agencies and First Nations is key for success.