A new paper by a team of scientists and forest experts says Western Canada barely has a decade to act if there’s any hope of heading off more destructive wildfires.
Former wildfire fighter and current University of British Columbia Okanagan assistant professor of earth sciences, Mathieu Bourbonnais, says intense wildfires like those currently burning in B-C will be commonplace by 2050 without a long-term plan that addresses climate change and forestry management.
Without action, he says B-C and other provinces would face billions of dollars in fire suppression and infrastructure costs, while hundreds or thousands of people could die prematurely every year from the effects of smoke exposure.
The study was released hours after another 161 properties in the Cariboo region were placed on evacuation alert as a wildfire near 100 Mile House burns out of control, and thousands more properties remain on evacuation order — threatened by some of the roughly 250 blazes across the province.
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