Glen Korstrom
Northern News Services

NNSL (Aug 09/99) - The debate over when to burn is heating up.

Fort Smith elder Raymond Beaver says the autumn is a better time for controlled burns, while Thebacha Forestry manager David "Yogi" Heron stresses that spring conditions are ideal.

Both were at a Resources Wildlife and Economic Development-sponsored caribou range fire monitoring project camp near Fort Smith on July 23.

"Instead of burning in the spring time, they should burn in the fall," Beaver said at the camp.

"In the spring, when they burn they're faced with future fires that might relight because they haven't put out all the places. If it goes in the bush, it stays there dormant for a while. Then, all of a sudden, there's a fire."

Heron's view is that spring is the best season because scraggly dead brush and grass can be cleared away.

He said short "perfect condition windows" appear after the snowmelt dries, but while the trees have roots still supplying branches with lots of moisture.

Controlled burns around Fort Smith are usually dead grass and brush, much like a burn this April around the Foxhole site near where the July fire monitoring camp was held.

Heron said fall may only be better than spring if the intention is to clear away trees as well as scrub.

As for the camp, RWED forest fire technician, Alicia Chalifoux, said its intention was to share and exchange traditional and scientific knowledge.

The Salt River First Nation, the Metis Nation and the Town of Fort Smith supplied three youth each to stay at the week-long camp to mix with elders, plant trees and monitor soil and water conditions.

To monitor the water conditions, for example, the youth went out with Chalifoux and took measurements of total dissolved solids, dissolved oxygen, pH balance and the temperature of water at several points on each side of a road leading into camp.

A controlled, or prescribed, burn occurred only on one side of the road in April.

Though the preliminary results showed the two sides of the road were very similar, the intent of the experiment was to see if there were any differences.

"I take all the information and will look at the things that have happened in the years before and see what the differences are to see if the fire burns are affecting the water."

She said a pH imbalance is possible after a fire.

"These are the people who are going to be running things in a generation," Chalifoux said of the youth at the camp.

"We need to teach them about these kinds of things so that if they want to go into this kind of work then they can. We're giving them hands-on experience."

She said some discussions through the week included fire history, medicinal properties of plants and survival tips.

"I learned things about soil and how to measure trees and water sampling and what kinds of different plants we have around here. All the bushes looked the same to me until I went in there and saw how they are different," said Salt River band camp participant, Kim Bjornson.

"I (used to) only know there were those white trees and then there were those bushy ones."

Another student, Greg Hamann, said the trip reminded him more of a biology field trip than anything else.