B.C. has doubled its old wildfire record. Experts say we can take action now to slow crisis

It's official — B.C. has now more than doubled the previous record for area burned during a single wildfire season. 

As the extreme weather of climate change makes destructive summers like this year's more and more likely, the province's independent forests watchdog is calling for radical action to make our landscapes more resistant to fire.

"The urgency is really unfortunate. The numbers this year are devastating. The casualties, loss of life is horrific," Keith Atkinson, chair of the Forest Practices Board told CBC News.

About 28,500 square kilometres of B.C. has burned so far this year, a huge jump from the 13,500 that burned in 2018. Two firefighters have died in the line of duty, and another four subcontractors were killed in a car accident on their way home from the job.

And it's not just B.C. This has been the worst wildfire season the entire country has seen in modern history. 

Atkinson described 2023 as an "alarming" year for wildfires, but said it hasn't necessarily come as a shock.

"We know that there's a tremendous amount of forest fuel out there and high risk of wildfire across the province, so I'm not totally surprised."

Wildfires experts say decades of zealous fire suppression tactics and forest management strategies have left the landscape littered with vegetation ready to ignite.

In June, as the wildfire season was ramping up, the Forest Practices Board released a report calling on the B.C. government to take "bold and immediate action" to change how the province's land is managed. 

It urges the province to reject status quo practices that exclude fire whenever possible and prize dense monocultures of economically valuable but highly flammable evergreen trees, and move toward a world where people can co-exist safely with fire.

The scale of the proposed task is huge. According to the report, about 45 per cent of B.C.'s public land — more than 390,000 square kilometres — is at extreme or high risk of fire.

But the cost of inaction is even more immense, the Forest Practices Board argues. Not only are lives, homes, human health and livelihoods at risk, but fighting modern fires comes with a heavy price tag.

So far this year, B.C.'s firefighting efforts have cost more than $1 billion. In comparison, just $72 million has been spent since 2018 to remove potential fuels from 260 square kilometres, according to the board's report.

West Kelowna Fire Chief Jason Brolund drew attention to the imbalance at a United Nations conference on climate change, where he was asked to speak about this summer's devastating McDougall Creek fire.