Fighting wildfires has long been compared to waging a military battle, and the firefighters are declared victorious when they have killed the fire. In this view of the world, the only good fire is a dead fire.

But in the Yukon, the people responsible for managing fires would like Yukoners to rethink this approach. While fighting fires around communities will always be a top priority, the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND) thinks it is often fighting a losing battle on remote wild lands in the Yukon.

The DIAND Fire Management program has taken a long hard look at the department's success rate fighting different types of fires, and thinks it is time to accept wildland fires as both essential and inevitable on wild lands in the boreal forest.

Al Beaver, the department's Fire Management Planning Supervisor, says that in some ways fire management agencies everywhere have been victims of their own success, and the Yukon is no different.

Firefighters are declared successful -- and victorious -- if they control a fire within 24 hours. "We average a 90 percent success rate per year, which is astounding when you look at our fire regime and everything else," says Beaver.

DIAND is responsible for managing fires on 275,000 square kilometers of boreal forest, a landscape in which fire is both essential for forest health, and inevitable. (See last week's yourYukon, Column 233)

After completing a major analysis of the Yukon's track record on fire management, DIAND is now of the view that too often they are just working to postpone fires on wild lands. If fire managers keep putting out the relatively small blazes, they are just delaying the time when a major crown fire will sweep through the area.

The problem is that forests naturally become more flammable with time. Woody debris and other organic matter builds up year after year, loading the landscape with fuel for the next fire. Big fires are the norm as five percent of the total number of fires accounts for 95 percent of the total area burned.

"Sometimes we take too much credit when we do not really deserve it. If you are not going to manage fuels, you are just going to postpone the next big fire," says Beaver.

On wild lands, the success rate is closely tied to the seasonal fire danger in any particular year. In very wet years such as 1997 the success rate was 98 percent. In 1998, one of the driest years on record, the success rate dropped to 86 percent.

Programs like Fire Smart encourage people to reduce the risk of fire around their homes and communities by clearing dead wood out of their yards and thinning trees when necessary. But this is an impossible task on vast wild lands in the Yukon and also not necessarily a desirable one as the boreal forest is dependent on fire.

Beaver describes the conventional approach to fire control as an obsession transplanted from Europe that is completely unsuited to the wild lands of the Yukon. He says that this approach to fire control has failed miserably on wild lands everywhere.

"Fire control has always been synonymous with fire exclusion. This concept began in western Europe which has a cooler, damper climate and a landscape that is fragmented by development and extensively managed. Every extra piece of wood is picked up off of the ground there," he says.

DIAND has sophisticated programs for analyzing the probability that a particular fire can be contained. Time is of the essence once a fire has been detected, and the distance between the ignition point and the firebase can be the most important factor determining success.

In mature upland spruce, there is generally a 90 percent chance of containing fires that occur within 30 kilometers of a firebase. When conditions are extreme, the chances can drop to almost zero percent, even close to a base.

Beaver says that having crews out in the hinterlands also increases the risk for communities. "If we're way out there fighting a fire, we cannot get back quickly and that restricts our ability to protect your back yard."

Fire-fighting is also expensive, particularly in a place like the Yukon that has so much wild land, and so few taxpayers to share the financial burden. The Yukon spends $146.67 dollars per capita to fight fires, compared to $12.67 in Alberta or a low of $3.75 per capita in Ontario.

It costs about $25,000 to fight your average remote fire, and Beaver estimates that most of this money goes to economic interests outside of the Yukon for high-budget items such as aircraft. As this money is coming out of the taxpayer's pocket, and at the expense of other public programs, he thinks it is time for a made-in-the-Yukon policy.

"So what is your objective? Are you spending public funds just for postponement?"

Fire postponement is also an issue in the southeast Yukon with its fledgling forest industry. The upland forest in this region has an 80-100 year fire cycle, and any increased call for fire suppression in the area will mean the spending of more public money in remote areas.

Beaver quotes one of the world's top fire management gurus, Miron Heinselman, on why we have ended up with our present approach to fires. "We have entered into a grand ecological experiment in trying to produce climax forest communities over entire landscapes that do not exist in nature."

For more information on fire management in the Yukon, contact Erin Hockin at 667-3312.