Jasper National Park will conduct no prescribed burns in the park this summer and may even have to scale back the fire management program entirely in the years to come.

According to Jasper National Park’s Fire and Vegetation Specialist Dave Smith, the reasons for the prescribed burn cancellation are twofold: lack of money in this year’s budget and lack of moisture in the ground.

“The federal government is strapped for cash and they’ve totally cancelled the program for this summer, but if they were going to cancel things, this was the best time to do it,” said Smith.

Smith explained that the drought code, the index that parks uses to measure the dryness in the ground beneath, the layers of dead grass, moss and leaves on the forest floor, is well below traditional levels. The drought code is currently showing soil dryness at levels traditionally found at the end of a summer, not the beginning when spring rains and melts are rife. This means that conditions for setting a prescribed fire this summer are likely not going to be ideal unless there are significant rainfalls.

The lack of moisture in the ground means that when a fire burns, it can burn much more severely than normal and significantly lengthen the amount of time it takes for vegetation to grow back. Prescribed burns are typically ordered when moisture conditions (along with a variety of other factors) are right and re-growth can happen soon after the fire burns out.

Conditions right now could create some very severe and harsh burns on the ground, that would effectively be a “scorched earth” burn, said Smith. Worse, the conditions that lead to harsher burns appear to be happening with greater frequency.

“Until we get a good amount of drought code affecting downfalls, we may be out of the business of burning,” said Smith. “That would be disappointing, but if the conditions aren’t right, there’s not a lot we can do.”

He said over the last eight to nine years, the drought code has generally been showing higher than normal readings (the higher, the drier).

“The drought code is one of the most important indicators that we have about what a fire is going to do,” said Smith. 

For those numbers to be so high right now and to be trending upwards is a distinct sign that Jasper is in the midst of a drought trend, he believes.

Smith said the rain and snow over the past several weeks around Jasper will do little to lower the code. The wet stuff didn’t come down in any sustained way and has only been enough to get the surface of the ground damp.

Smith said there were a number of prescribed burns in the works for the area this summer. A 750 to 800 ha fire could have been set in the Vine Creek area, near Windy Point. Six much smaller prescribed burns (20 ha each) were also planned for locations on top of the Bench, directly behind the town. The Fiddle Creek area, at the point where it leads into the Athabasca, was also to be prescribed a 350 ha burn this summer.

Smith explained some of those prescribed burns were being done as fire barriers for a larger prescribed fire set to burn sometime in the years to come. However, given that things are so dry right now, Smith said those prescribed fires may never happen.

“We may not need it. Nature might takes its own course and burn,” said Smith. “A big fire that’s totally out of our control, that’s a real possibility.”

Staff members for MP Rob Merrifield could not address why there is no federal funding for prescribed burns this year by press time.