Jasper and The Big One

By Nick Carter

In his 1996 lecture “Conservation, from Chaucer to Smoky Bear”, one of the things that Canadian Rockies naturalist Ben Gadd discussed was forest fires. He discussed how they aren’t necessarily the all-negative force of environmental evil that Smoky Bear burdened generations with preventing at all times. How certain environments actually need fire as part of their natural ecological cycles. How we learned that informed use of forest fires can actually be a necessary thing for nature with the added benefit of keeping our own settlements safe from destruction. And how Smoky Bear was, the whole time, really working for the logging industry, who wanted to see the forests of North America turn into profitable timber, not ashes.

This leads us to the town of Jasper. A tourism town in a national park and situated in a valley full of old lodgepole pine trees. The lodgepole pine is a species that relies on fire, as the heat opens the cones and allows for new seeds to grow in the fertile ashes of their burned parent trees. Fire also clears out the dead, insect-ravaged wood that builds up in old forests, recycles their nutrients, and makes ecological room for different species to colonise the area. When such fires are relatively small and localised they work well as part of a healthy ecological cycle.

According to Gadd, prescribed burning took some time to catch on in Alberta’s mountain parks, in part thanks to objections from the tourism industry. Mountain slopes aren’t as appealing to paying visitors as lush green ones. Burning too close to the Jasper townsite became a politically contentious thing. And that’s not good. Put off too many small, healthy fires and the risk of a big, destructive fire becomes worse and worse. To quote Gadd, “The town of Jasper, where I live, could easily go up in flames. Jasper is surrounded by many square kilometres of well-aged lodgepole pine, all waiting for the Big One.”

Nearly 30 years later, it looks like Jasper finally got hit by the Big One. All across the province people held their breath in anxious dread as both visitors to and residents of Jasper had to flee into the night as the fire devoured the valley. Homes, pets, businesses, and more had to be abandoned and left in the trust of the dauntless firefighters who held their ground in defence of the beloved town. We all braced ourselves for the worst as rumours that there’d be no town left to return to trickled in.

Days later, after this Armageddon subsided, the damage could be assessed. The town survived, but it wasn’t unscathed. The southwest side was hit hardest. Photos and videos of the aftermath showed the charred skeletons of old pines amid the smoke. Homes and business were indeed lost. Campgrounds and hiking trails were scorched. A firefighter tragically lost their life. The collective grief reverberated through the province and beyond.

Despite it all, the Jasper the Bear statue survived, standing defiantly in the face of oblivion. This charming mascot from decades past endured trial by fire and emerged a symbol of resilience. A current fundraising t-shirt by Jasper Brewing Co. (one of my favourite spots in town, and I’m glad they remain) features a graphic of the bear surrounded by fireweed- one of the first things to grow back after a burn.

During the fire and its immediate aftermath, there were a lot of voices online asking questions and pointing fingers. One thing I noticed was people seeming to regard the Jasper fire as a wholly unnatural menace. Something that would irreparably annihilate the town, the Park, and every living thing within, down to the last groundhog and grizzly bear. I’d like to offer a more nuanced take here.

Events like this represent a time when the realities of nature conflict with the desires of people. Like all other dangerous things in nature fire isn’t out to get us, but it’s still something we should treat with care and respect. Going back to Ben Gadd on forest fire: “It is no longer thought to be inherently bad. Nor is it thought to be good. It is now known to be necessary.” The hard fact is that this mountain valley, full of old lodgepole pine trees, seems to have been long overdue for burning. But we built a town there, one that no one wanted to get burned along with the trees. Environmentalists, and I’m certainly one, can recognize the necessity of fire while at the same time wanting to prevent the loss of human lives, livelihoods, and landmarks.

As for the wildlife of Jasper, you can rest easy knowing that they’ll still be with us. While animal lovers like me hate the thought of any creature dying in a fire, Alberta’s native species have always lived alongside it, and have adapted to deal with it. Some individual animals surely perished in the blaze, but wildlife populations as a whole can generally take it on the chin. Some species even find advantages in forest fire aftermath. The new leafy growth that shows up first where once old conifers stood is prized by moose and deer, and birds like the Black-backed Woodpecker prefer burned areas where they feed on insect larvae.

That said, if Alberta’s climate continues to get hotter and drier, fires will only get worse, and that won’t be so good for wildlife. Especially if we aren’t practising the use of wildfire in the wisest way.

Some might argue that it’s presumptuous for humans to take the responsibility of wildfire management into our own hands, but consider this: long before the Canadian government banned them from the mountains, Indigenous peoples in what’s now Alberta knew well how fire could be used to keep ecosystems from getting out of whack, and made use of intentional burnings for this very purpose. This traditional practice of fire management was done for centuries. It’s knowledge that we should never have tossed aside and should listen to now.

In the end I don’t know if what happened could have been prevented completely. It certainly could’ve been worse, but it might have also been a lot better.

One the day I sat down to write this, it was announced that people could now return to Jasper. The town, as well some sections of the Park in general, won’t look the same. They won’t feel the same either. But when you almost lose something, you tend to remember how much it meant to you all along. I don’t know what tomorrow will have for Jasper, but I’m sure we’ll cherish what we have all the more as we head into the future together.

Hopefully, we’ll be wiser.