‘Outdated rules and unclear responsibility’: B.C. Forest Practices Board says forestry changes could reduce wildfire risk

VICTORIA, B.C. — A two-year investigation has found “outdated rules and unclear responsibility” are stopping forestry from becoming a wildfire prevention tool.

British Columbia’s Forest Practices Board says an independent body that audits B.C. forest practices examined operations between 2019 and 2022 in areas where communities and forests meet, including the Sea to Sky, Cariboo-Chilcotin and Peace districts.

It says fire hazard assessments are a “cornerstone of wildfire risk reduction,” and while the industry assessments met 70 per cent of the requirements, fewer than one-quarter were completed on time.

The board says municipalities are excluded from the definition of legal interface, a term used for fires burning close to homes, which means logging debris can remain for up to 30 months, even in high-risk areas.

The report makes five recommendations to the province that it says would help support “faster fuel cleanup, better co-ordination and more consistent protection for people and communities throughout B.C.”

The suggestions include encouraging forest operators to actively reduce fire risk, improve co-ordination between government and industry, update legal definitions to add municipalities in the interface, modernize hazard assessment guidelines and incentivize faster logging cleanup.

Board chair Keith Atkinson says more than a million B.C. residents live in areas with high or extreme wildfire risk.

“Foresters are already active in these spaces. With better rules and incentives, their efforts can become part of the wildfire solution,” he says in the release.

“This is an opportunity to improve our policies and processes toward proactive, risk-reducing forestry. It starts with better policy and ends with safer, more fire-resilient communities.”

Find out more about wildfires in northeast B.C. here. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 19th, 2025.

The Canadian Press