Canada looks to centuries-old indigenous use of fire to combat out-of-control wildfires
As Canada deals with the same wildfire problems plaguing the western U.S. - fires of increasing intensity burning larger areas as the climate and forests change - Canadian governments are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on more and better firefighting equipment, increased personnel, fire-tracking satellites and improving community readiness.
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The indigenous people of Canada for centuries intentionally set fires on the landscape for a variety of cultural needs.
"They burned for medicinal plants, for food plants, to produce firewood, to produce teepee poles, other technological uses - warmth, cooking, everything else. It was how you survived on this landscape," said Robert Gray, a wildland fire ecologist who runs his own company, RW Gray Consulting based in Chilliwack, British Columbia.
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Banned for more than a century by European settlers, cultural burning is now making a tentative comeback in Canada, spurred by an urgency to find solutions to megafires costing into the billions of dollars that are coming with increasing frequency - a problem punctuated by Canada's record-shattering wildfire season last year. Nearly 58,000 square miles of the nation burned - an area about the size of Illinois - in more than 6,500 wildfires coast-to-coast from April to October, according to revised numbers from the Canadian Forest Service.
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