Staff from Lakeland College’s Emergency Training Centre joined representatives from the Nature Conservancy of Canada, Canadian Wildlife Services, the City of Saskatoon, and other conservation and land management organizations in Saskatoon October 21–25 for the third annual Canadian Prairies Prescribed Fire Exchange’s (CPPFE) Training Exchange (TREX), generously supported by the Weston Family Foundation Prairie Grassland Initiative.
Hosted by Saskatoon’s Meewasin Valley Authority and the Canadian Prairies Prescribed Fire Exchange, the five-day training program was designed to bring together a diverse group of nearly 50 fire practitioners, including land managers, volunteer and career firefighters, educators, university students, natural resource managers, scientists, and researchers to share knowledge about coordinating and conducting prescribed burns.
Prescribed burning involves the controlled and intentional application of fire to land to meet a range of ecological and cultural objectives. Burn windows are determined by the temperature, relative humidity, wind direction, and wind speed ranges that will allow crews to safely apply fire to an area with minimal risks to adjacent properties. Burn seasons fall within the early spring and the late fall, when temperatures hover just above freezing and fuels are relatively dry.
Native prairie grassland is one of the most endangered ecosystems on the planet. Prior to colonization, Indigenous people regularly burned prairie grasslands to reduce fuel loads of dead and cured plant material, to mitigate woody encroachment, and to revitalize native plant diversity on the prairie landscape that depends on the presence of fire, drawing grazing animals like bison and deer to the fresh plant growth that follows a burn. This traditional ecological knowledge has been stifled for many decades, as the fear of fire overtaking permanent structures and lucrative timber stands led to fire suppression policies, depriving the land of one of its key ecological drivers and Indigenous communities of their right to care for the land using traditional techniques. Today, the prairies are in a fire deficit, and the buildup of dead and dried fuel risks leading to uncontrollable wildfires.
Prescribed burning lowers the risk of more dangerous fire by clearing out dead fuel, increases water availability by burning up plants that place a high demand for water in the soil, increases plant diversity and the presence of native plants while controlling invasive species, reduces woody encroachment, and improves wildlife habitat by clearing away dead material and encouraging new food and cover to grow.
Brad Elder, Kody Wohlers, and Melanie Schmidt—three expert trainers from the American Midwest, where the culture of prescribed burns is strong and vibrant—led the group as passionate and experienced advocates of cooperative ecological burning. Renny Grilz from Meewasin headed up the week as Incident Commander. Throughout the week, participants had hands-on experience with a variety of ignition patterns, suppression techniques, hand tools, water pumps, and UTVs, as well as with leadership and team development. The trainers shared presentations on smoke management, pump winterization, and Elder’s harrowing experience surviving a wildfire burnover just days after returning from CPPFE’s first TREX. Participants were assigned to one of two divisions for the week, where they were further divided into crews of five. Crews took turns working in holding and ignition positions, ensuring the “good fire” stayed where it was intended and rogue embers were extinguished expeditiously.
The divisions burned a total of 121.5 acres throughout the week, with highlights including a 37-acre night burn at the St. Denis National Wildlife Area managed by the Canadian Wildlife Service, a 22-acre burn at the Aberdeen Community Pasture managed by its patron group with technical support on range management provided by the Nature Conservancy of Canada, and a 7-acre burn at the archeologically significant Wanuskewin Heritage Park. At the latter, crews burned to rejuvenate native prairie grasses and to increase visibility of the 1,500-year-old stone medicine wheel in the park.
Over the course of the week, confidence and camaraderie grew, while a healthy respect for the ferocity of fire was maintained. Lakeland’s Emergency Training Centre (ETC) looks forward to partnering in bringing good fire to the Canadian prairies once again. The college’s Department of Environmental Science has been working with the CPPFE and Meewasin Valley Authority over the last two years to foster instructor knowledge and the possibility of bringing prescribed fire to campus, resulting in Lakeland’s first prescribed fire in partnership with the ETC this past fall. “It’s an exciting opportunity to bring fire back to the landscape and provide yet another tool to help restore healthy functioning ecosystems and communities” says Environmental Studies instructor Jennifer McGuinness, who attended CPPFE’s TREX last year. “We hope that future development in education will allow for a greater understanding of what good fire is and how it can be safely and effectively applied.”
Jeremy Bailey, prescribed fire training director for The Nature Conservancy, has said, “Fire is local, and the workforce ultimately must be local, and people need to be able to say, ‘Today is a good burn day, call the neighbors, let’s go to work.” To learn more about prescribed fire and its benefits to prairie grasslands, visit https://www.grasslandfire.ca/presentations-videos
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