Alberta on Fire: A History of Cultural Burning
April 1, 2016
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April 2016 Wildlands Advocate article by Todd Kristensen and Ashley Reid
Fire science in Alberta has come a long way but the growing practice of prescribed burning is actually a step back to the past. Archaeologists and palaeoecologists are discovering that Western Canada has burned at the hands of people for thousands of years. Henry Lewis, a founding father of First Nations fire research, stated that much of what was thought to be wilder-ness in Alberta when Europeans arrived was likely a mosaic of manipulated landscapes influenced by controlled burns. Cultural or anthropogenic burning refers to human cre-ation of fires to maintain preferred stages of ecological succession. These types of con-trolled burns began in the province millennia ago and continue in our modern forests and grasslands. Alberta has a rich history of fire use – the recognition of it has implications for modern conservation and land management.
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