08/08/2026
Every summer, we watch helicopters, airtankers and firefighters work tirelessly to battle wildfires across British Columbia.
Their work is critical.
Bruce Blackwell is the owner of Blackwell Consulting, a Canadian forestry and environmental consulting firm, and he’s a wildfire expert. He’s spent nearly 40 years working as a professional forester and biologist specializing in forest and fuel management.
“We need to invest in doing what we know we need to do: mitigation,” he says. “Suppression alone is not going to fix this problem, regardless of how much money we throw at it.”
Bruce has worked on high-profile fire management plans, including one in Fort McMurray in 2015, the year before it burned, and in Jasper before the catastrophic fires of 2024. But his work has fallen on deaf ears.
“I worked on the fire management plan for Jasper in 2004 with three other colleagues, including wardens in the park,” he says. “We laid out a plan that, if it had been implemented, I don't think Jasper would have seen any of the damage that it saw.”
And Bruce knows that the problem is not going to go away on its own. In fact, wildfires are only going to get worse.
“I wouldn't have predicted to see it get as bad as it's gotten, as fast as it's gotten,” he explains. “It's only a matter of time before we see entrapment of members of the public.”
Bruce’s solution to tackle the current wildfire crisis? He says we need to...
🌲Invest as much tax dollars as we can into mitigation.
🌲 Take a risk-based approach and focus on the areas that have the highest risk, and slowly start to reduce these areas down a priority list.
🌲 Stop building new homes in the interface.
Bruce isn’t losing hope, but he is increasingly frustrated.
“What's it going to take? Deaths from an entrapment event?” he asks. "Or two communities destroyed in one fire season? I don't know what the threshold is.”
Learn more about Bruce’s work at https://www.bablackwell.com/
