“This was TOTALLY preventable” - hunter responds to Jasper fires
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Summary
Nearly half of the historic village of Jasper burned to a crisp overnight on Wednesday as fires approached the town s edge. On Thursday morning, firefighters worked throughout the day to contain the fires, but were forced to retreat when the wind suddenly picked up and the fires entered the town.
Transcript
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nearly half of the historic village of jasper burned to a crisp overnight on wednesday
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firefighters worked throughout the day as fires hummed on the town's edge but were forced to
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retreat when the wind suddenly picked up and the fires entered to town burning the west end of much
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of jasper village now wildfires aren't new to alberta but they seem to be getting worse every
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year and that has only led to further division with questions like who's to blame the province
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or the federal government is this the result of climate change or improper fire and forest
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management joining me to discuss today is one very popular ex-user known as marty up north
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his full name is marty belanger marty thank you so much for joining us today to discuss
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hey rachel happy to be here so one of the reasons why i wanted to have you specifically on the show
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is because i know you spend a ton of time in the woods you're always posting some of your exciting
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excursions going out for those long camping trips so you are someone who actually knows the woods
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and the forest really well i know a lot of people like to comment on things but i think it adds a
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little bit of expertise when someone actually spends time out there and knows what they're
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talking about if i was going to go for a camping trip i'd probably want to bring you along just to
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make sure that i don't get eaten by a bear or something but uh why don't you just start by
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explaining some of your experience with the audience what you've observed and how much time
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you spend out in the woods in places like jasper over the past number of years yeah sure so actually
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online i'm known as marty up north i've been known as marty up north for 20 years let's say and um i spent
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i spent a good 25 years of my adult life working on just outside of jasper i lived in towns like edson
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and fox creek and grand prairie and and when you live up north you know the wilderness is all around
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us and so and and you you become you know if you want to enjoy living up north you have to enjoy the
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wilderness whether it's hiking fishing things like that and particularly one of my passions is is
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hiking you know you said camping and and i don't i i camp but i hike i go into the back country into
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the wilderness and i go far from the main roads and jasper you know i i had a tweet the other day
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so what's happening in jasper for me right now is devastating i mean it's heartbreaking because it's
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it's uh it it is my playground and it is a place that's near and dear to me and to a lot of albertans
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and people around the world and um so i i i spend a lot of time in the wilderness in jasper in
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particular i mean jasper has about 1600 kilometers of backcountry trails like historic trails that were
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established by fur traders and and and hardly a video of mine like i've probably published 50 videos
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of just me hiking in the backcountry and in almost every video there's a moment where i pause and i turn
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the camera and i explain something to people something that i'm witnessing and one of the
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topics that often comes up while i was hiking is the mismanagement of the forest you know people for
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instance would ask me like do you see animals on your hikes i'm like oh you you never see animals
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because the forests are not natural anymore and and the food that the animals want is not there
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you know i i turn the camera around and show old trees that are dying or trees that have been
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infested by beetles or you know things like that so you know that that's the that was the basis of
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my tweet yesterday when i was unhappy is that unfortunately i think what happened in jasper
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was completely preventable well it's always nice to have a real expert join us and not someone who's
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sort of like an academia expert where they just read about things and never go try anything for
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themselves i know i'm certainly tired of those types of experts my audience is too you spoke a little
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bit about the devastation in jasper for my audience who might not have seen much of those clips yet
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we have a clip here we're going to show you guys just so you can get a sense of just exactly how
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damaging that fire was and how much of the town burned out take a look at this next clip
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okay this is not tough with the with the cat we may need one or two so i when once i know i'll i'll let
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the nodwell going down to the petro can and just wait for there
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all right i'm on my way yeah that uh there's another water truck parked there i think
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i'm stepping away from the radio for about five minutes
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i think when you hear the individual who was recording that video just say that was mom and
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dad's house you know that just really kind of hits home the impact of the fact that someone lived there
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and you know there all those memories have been burned all their belongings have been burned down
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just absolutely devastating not to mention just the fact that jasper was such a historic village
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you even mentioned going hiking along some of the fur trails i am really kicking myself you know i've
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lived in alberta for about two years just over two years and i never made it up to jasper
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so certainly disappointing and i'm going to make every effort to go as soon as i can
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but i mean you you said you spent a lot of time there it's sort of your playground how did you feel
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when you got your first the first few images came through and you realized exactly how
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how damaged jasper was going to be from these wildfires on wednesday
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well my my first reaction of course is is was sorrow like i'm upset you know i'm sad about it but then
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my it quickly turned to sort of anger because it's like i said it's it was preventable to me it was
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preventable um especially in light of the fact that here in alberta i mean we had a major forest fire
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like this the damage you know a good portion of slave lake before you came to alberta slave lake
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got damaged fort mcmurray got damaged we had we've had little villages like hondo and smith get damaged
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but you know we've had two significant ones so we should have learned a few lessons from from those
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ones so yeah it it it quickly goes from sadness to anger when i look at those pictures and relief and
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there's a bit of relief because luckily a good chunk of the city or the town of jasper survived
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because boy the way jasper is situated it's in a valley it's in the athabasca valley with big
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mountains on both sides so it's kind of like it's trapped right there's only one way in and one way
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out and a fire coming down that valley could absolutely have done way worse than what it did
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so kudos to the guys who fought the structural fires in town you've said now a couple times that
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this was preventable and i want to dig into that a little bit deeper so what do you think exactly
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the federal government did wrong to not allow for this to be contained earlier or to be maybe
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entirely avoided i know something that's come up so much since i've moved to alberta when we're
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talking about wildfires is that they are not doing enough controlled burns to get rid of some of the
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dead wood that we see everywhere and it just allows fires to grow and grow and grow when they do occur
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so why don't you just start by addressing that do you think we need to have more controlled burns in
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areas where maybe some pine beetles have come through and absolutely ravaged especially in jasper you
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know there was i was reading reports that maybe 98 percent of of of some trees in jasper had been
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infected by pine beetles and we actually have some images we can throw up you can just see the the
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mountains in jasper are covered with red which shows that they've been totally infested with these
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pine beetles is that one of the things that you've noticed you you you just gave a lesson in forest
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management 101 you know you know the average person can see it right everybody who lives in alberta
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especially calgary edmonton who drives through the rockies we all see those red trees on the
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side of the hill that have been uh sometimes they're they're the they're damaged because of
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an earlier forest fire but a lot of times they're damaged by a pine beetle and you know the pine
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beetle um the pine beetle only attacks mature pine trees well actually the pine beetle will attack all
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the trees the all the pine trees but the mature trees it's like an old person who gets the flu have a
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hard time fighting the pine beetle and in the effort of fighting how a tree fights the pine beetle is it
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produces sap and it tries to eject the pine beetle and an old tree produces so much sap that it kills
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itself trying to fight off the infestation a young tree fights it off easily so that's what happens so
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the trees in a lot of our areas first of all the trees are getting too old so we're allowing trees to
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get too old and and we should you know if we if we don't harvest those trees then nature takes over
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and either the pine beetle will kill them or a fire will come along or the wind will knock them down so
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we're allowing trees to get too old which is a problem right everybody has this vision of oh we
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love old growth forests and but when you think old growth you're imagining whatever what you're seeing
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in british columbia like the big the big redwoods and sequoias but here in alberta old growth means a tree
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that's 120 years old so it needs to be harvested otherwise nature will take care of itself so in
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and in the parks they're stuck they don't want to harvest so they kind of have to let nature take
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care of itself which ends up being the fire the devastating fire and if they're going to take that
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approach and let the fires go in well so one of the ways they do it is yes is the control burn so
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historically you can go you you know that the trees are dead you know they're going to get invaded by
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the pine beetles but you at least remove a lot of the other fuel that's in the area the stuff on the
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ground so we we don't do enough control burns that's i i think we don't do enough control burns
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i don't think we do enough harvesting we're afraid to harvest trees in the national parks
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and and then the other thing we are terrible at doing in our parks is is the mix of the forest right
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and so when you look at our forest they they're mostly made up nowadays of spruce and um and pines the
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the coniferous coniferous trees and what we need more of are the the the less commercially valuable
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trees like the poplars and the aspens but we go out of our way to prevent those from growing so
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you know there's a lot of mismanagement in that sense when it comes to us not doing enough of those
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controlled burns that seems like it would alleviate a lot of the initial harm why do you think we're not
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doing them anymore a couple of things i mean some of it is just bureaucracy the the darn bureaucracy
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of the federal government because the parks in this case are managed by the federal government
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and and you know even when it comes to control burn they're they're arguing among themselves as to
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where it should be done for what reason at what time they're also scared now i mean they they they've
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lost the expertise of of managing these control burns because they've had several control burns in the
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last decade sort of get out of hand on them so so they're nervous they're they're in a catch-22 they
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want to do the right thing but they're kind of scared to do the right thing or unable to do the
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right thing there was some debate online as to you know whose fault this was a lot of people pointing
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blame at daniel smith's united conservative party government other people pointing to the federal
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government now jasper national park it says it right there in the name it is a national park it does
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fall under the purview of parks canada which is a federal entity you know fairly self-explanatory
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do you think that this is something that maybe we would have better success in if the provincial
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government had more of a say in what was going on in the parks or maybe even attempted to take it over
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entirely as some people have suggested they should do well that's an interesting question that no i
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think i think you know let's say we transferred jasper over to the provincial government tomorrow
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we we probably end up with a similar situation i mean jasper and banff you know they're they're
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struggling the other struggle with those two places with all the national parks is they they they have
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a mandate on one side of protecting a piece of an ecosystem for future generations but on the other
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side they're also trying to they recognize it's touristy and there's money to be made and so i think i think
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um now so that balance between protecting and tourism might be better handled by the provincial
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government who's closer because i mean one of the other problems you know of course is distance
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right ottawa technically manages the provincial the the national parks while ottawa bureaucrats in
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ottawa are a long ways away from from banff and jasper so there'd be some improvements perhaps but
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there'd also be some of the same problems i think so you think that the united conservative party
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government or the alberta government more generally speaking wouldn't be necessarily quick to do those
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controlled burns that you're saying are so necessary partly because tourism you think maybe the
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controlled burns would sort of scare off tourists for those spring months when they typically look
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to do them or you just think bureaucrats are going to get in the way once again
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combination of both yeah i mean i i would hope i actually i mean if i think about it i would hope
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that if you transfer the management of the parks and that's a possibility actually the parks could stay
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as as federal entities managed by uh the local experts the provincial government um i would like to
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think that we have more expertise in managing force than the federal government so yeah actually
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fundamentally i would hope that alberta can do a better job whether it's the ucp or the ndp
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yeah you know i tend to be of the mindset that whenever something is more local you tend to get a
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better response because the people who are running it just know the issue a little bit better it's like
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you know people are always paying so close attention to federal politics but you should actually pay
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closer attention to your local government because they tend to impact your direct life most often
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living in calgary i can say that firsthand we have one of the worst governments and they ruined
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everyone's summer with these water restrictions so you know case in point but when we're actually
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looking at danielle smith and her government you know a lot of people were pointing fingers at her
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saying this is your fault you haven't been taking climate change seriously what do you make of all that
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no that i i saw those posts i mean first of all their their their their mistake they they forget the
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fact that danielle only came into power you know a year ago so they're blaming her for cuts and things
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that happened in in 2021 2022 and and i've i've i've familiarized myself with the budget i mean that's
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something i look at closely and i can say for a fact that danielle has increased the firefighting budget
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in the province she she she learned from fort mcmurray she learned from from uh slave lake and when
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she came into power she's made the necessary adjustments in fact up until this fire in jasper
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the whole the whole trend of the number of fires in alberta and the size of the fires and the acreage
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loss was on a perfectly downward trajectory like everything was looking good this you know we just
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went through a bad period of of lightning strikes up north so up in the grand prairie area and places
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like that but we're we're we're on trend for bringing things under control def in in fact when you look
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at the long-term trends um there's less fires than there used to be in the past and then we're
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burning less acreage so you know a lot of people like to point out to last year i think last year
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was just a an outlier or or something more nefarious i mean yeah there was a lot of land that was burned
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last year i have my theories on that yeah i think a lot of people were concerned that those were
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intentionally lit and i know that the premier had said they had hired investigators to look into those or at
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least that they were human caused at best but uh it was definitely a very smoky summer last year
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and i know that albertans are kind of getting tired of the smoky summers because it's winter for so much
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of the year finally we have a little warm weather and then you know you don't want to bring the kids
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outside because it's not good for their lungs but just because you you brought it up you know you
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brought up the issue of danielle smith being attacked for for raising for lowering the firefighting
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budget she was actually asked about this at a press conference this week we're going to play that for
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you guys now just because i know some of my audience might have seen a little bit about this
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and i just wanted to set the record straight so here's danielle smith being asked about
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whether she lowered the firefighting budget take a listen hello premier smith thank you for taking my
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question so your government over the last few years has made various cuts to alberta's wildfire
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fighting budget do you regret making those cuts now why why not well look i mean my first uh firefighting
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season was last year and uh what we did in response to that was we increased the the firefighting
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budget by 50 percent in uh 20 23 4 it was a hundred point four million dollars in 24 25 we increased it
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to 155.4 million and that's the highest it's ever been um the and there's a reason for that is is that
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we we knew that we needed to get some of the equipment and change some of the practices as minister lowen
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had mentioned we uh declared the start of forest fire season early we had all of our personnel hired
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and in place by april 15th which is uh at may 15th by may 15th um and uh in addition to that because
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of the amount of uh damage that we saw last year when i when i first came in we had a billion dollar
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contingency um my first budget we increased that to a 1.5 billion dollar contingency
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and this budget we increased to a two billion dollar contingency so there is no limit to the
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amount of money that we will spend to make sure that we have the resources that we need and to
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make sure that we have the money available to assist with the with the recovery so i would say that we've
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looked at the lessons of the past and and we we made the uh the appropriate amount of uh of investment
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in this budget here so just because i know how my audience is going to react to that clip i just want
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to set the record straight that actually wasn't a mainstream media reporter asking that question
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that was actually a western standard reporter and you know i don't blame him it was probably one of
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those situations where you see a narrative trending on xo danielle smith cut the firefighting budget and
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then look what happened and sometimes you know you ask a question without digging into it too deep i
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myself am guilty of that so no shade to that reporter we all make those mistakes at times but you know
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when danielle smith is talking we actually increase the budget because we saw what happened last year and we
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we want to put an end to essentially not having enough money and she talked about the investments
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that she's making are we seeing that same level of investment from the federal government who
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actually runs our national parks like jasper marty oh i knew you were going there no we're not i mean
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can you imagine if steven gilbeau was on stage the number of questions i could ask him right like
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you promised us i'm sure there's clips on us he promised whatever or maybe not gilbeau but somebody
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promised water bombers we haven't bought a new water bomber in in canada and in in the last five
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or six years um there's definitely clips of of mp standing up in the house of commons asking the
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environment minister whether it's gilbeau or his predecessor uh mckenna like you know the mp for
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yellowhead or not yellowhead but for jasper saying hey you know we have a problem and and so the and and
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there is an old clip i think it is mckenna saying oh jasper's our top priority i mean there's
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we can pull document after document after document of of reports that were published about you know
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expressing problems in jasper and how this was just a you know uh a disaster waiting to happen
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so and and i want to go back to one quick thing right we we talk about jasper and jasper as a as a
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national park is a huge area but the town of jasper also has the same name right the town of jasper
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and so we talk about them in the same sentence but they are a little bit separate you know you asked
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about control burns like the control burns that the park wants to do are like in some of the far
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away areas and i like and nobody like that's fine if they want to go do a little control burn in some
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far away area and it doesn't work perfectly that's okay but the the town of jasper itself was
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mismanaged like you know that there's no excuse for that i mean a town is surrounded by trees
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where where where you know everybody was screaming i mean as another example like the the you know
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people went golfing in jasper you could go golfing in jasper and you could see these pine trees that
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were dead on the golf course and then you'd ask the the golf course superintendent like what do you
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hey larry when you're going to get rid of these trees and he would literally shrug and go oh it's
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too much paperwork right i mean i even published i i went and found the forms online just to cut a
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tree on your property in jasper a dead tree was a two-page form application form that required like
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an arborist to sign off and blah blah blah blah blah so the bureauc the bureaucracy in the town of jasper
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failed miserably honestly nothing boils my blood more than talking about bureaucracy my husband and
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i are in the process of hopefully purchasing a home and it's just like all the paperwork and
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everyone who needs to get their little cut just because you want to buy a home it's like how is
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this what we've dissolved into in a country that when you want to make an agreement with another
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person to purchase a home there's like a million jumps you have to hoop through and everyone gets
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you know to take their little slice out of the process like it's absolutely infuriating to me
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and just yeah imagine being in jasper you've got a dead tree in the back of your and you can't cut it down
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it's absolutely stunning so when you're saying that the town of jasper itself was mismanaged
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you're saying that there was dead trees all surrounding the the site of the town itself
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there's dead trees everywhere on the golf course another problem was that the there there were
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there were dead trees and there were no trees the proper trees like i said the proper trees that you
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want in town in a mix are the poplars and the um and and the aspen because they stop fire from moving
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like when in fort mcmurray when the fire was coming down it stopped at the river where there was these
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big aspen groves but and and aspens serve two purposes they happen to be a good food and they
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stop fires because of the way they're shaped and the aspens lose their leaves in the in the winter
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which allows the moisture to really hit the ground anyways you know so so jasper had no trees
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and whatever little trees they had were completely destroyed because they allow the elk and everybody
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loves the elk you know the elk are walking around town but again like push the elk out into the
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valleys and somewhere away from the main town where the tourists could still go see them and then do
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and and keep focused on so so yeah so managers in in town lost their focus we see that all the time
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right i mean i said it this morning somebody in town and jasper's primary job was to keep the town
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safe and they failed yeah and i mean i i suspect that probably no one's no one's head will be on
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the chopping block for this so it seems to happen time and time again while we're still on the topic
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of sort of forest management practices you posted something about cut lines that had been filled and
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and wrecked let's like we have a clip of that now let's just play that clip and then you can explain
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to all of us what we're really what we're seeing there and what the issue was of the government coming
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in and cutting down forest to block those cut lines let's play that next clip now well that's a cut line
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and the government came in here the alberta government came in here and did this insane destruction
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because they don't want us using these cut lines for any purpose
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so they do this they knock down trees on freaking believable
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like this is a major cut line that we used to quad down there and somehow or other they think that
00:23:50.000
plugging one cut line like this is going to save caribou or i don't know what they're thinking but
00:24:24.800
so they just literally dug it all up knocked down trees put holes everywhere so we can't use it
00:24:30.560
on our atvs we can't hunt okay marty so explain to me what are cut lines used for and explain as
00:24:37.040
well a little of your frustration for why they were cut down is it simply because you were no longer
00:24:40.960
able to access those roots on your atv or is there something deeper going on there
00:24:45.760
yeah so i so i actually i personally filmed that that's me talking i filmed that three weeks ago
00:24:50.400
um i was heading up north this is in the grand cache area which is north of of jasper and it's in
00:24:56.400
crown land big big crown land big giant force and i hunt there i've been hunting there for 30 years
00:25:02.080
so we were actually heading into our hunting camp to set up our camp so we can use it in august and
00:25:06.960
september and everywhere we were turning we were blocked all these cut lines have been
00:25:12.560
rolled over so for the viewers cut lines typically are um were cut in the 1960s
00:25:20.400
they're straight lines that cut across the land sometimes they're on uh and and they were used
00:25:25.600
for seismic activity that we you know they would send equipment down there sort of like do the
00:25:30.480
ultrasounds and find out where the oil might be buried in the ground so these cut lines are historic
00:25:36.320
they've existed since the 1960s and for for backcountry people like myself and horsemen and whatnot
00:25:42.640
they become sort of little back road highways and um and and so and they're all over the province and it
00:25:49.840
allows amazing access to the forest like and and a cut line is a thin little cut line so when you
00:25:55.600
look at the amount of land taken off because of the cut line it's minuscule so they're useful for us
00:26:02.640
they're useful for hunters campers all sorts of people and i found out why they were doing this in the
00:26:09.120
area where we are this is a pilot project and they're trying to protect some caribou so apparently
00:26:14.320
and i've never seen them in the area in 35 years of hunting there but apparently there's a small
00:26:18.960
herd of caribou in there and they want to protect the caribou by eliminating the access it's a pilot
00:26:25.520
project i don't know who came up with this idea or how it's going to work but we found out that it
00:26:30.560
was like a five million dollar contract that was tendered last year to somebody and they went in there
00:26:35.520
and and there are viewers who questioned me they said i don't know that's you know that's a
00:26:39.280
deadfall from the wind blowing it down because they they saw the root balls nope they went in there
00:26:44.400
with big mechanical equipment and they they dragged the trees down shovels you know not
00:26:50.960
excavators and and so they're blocking the lines i don't think they did any consultation with anybody
00:26:56.800
and and then so i just bring that up as an example because we were you know we were picking on the
00:27:01.680
federal government but i said you know to be fair let's pick on the alberta government a little bit
00:27:06.480
and uh and and and it's also an example of like if we have to access a fire somewhere you've
00:27:12.640
eliminated an amazing way that we used to be able to get in i mean at the end of that specific cut
00:27:17.360
line that one there was actually uh an abandoned um what we call a snowcat a bombardier track vehicle
00:27:25.600
that had been using to fight a fire probably 50 years ago so you know the government in its infinite
00:27:31.280
wisdom is creating and uh solving pretending to solve one problem and creating another one so i that's
00:27:37.200
that's all i wanted to show with that clip is that there's mismanagement going on everywhere just a
00:27:42.240
funny rachel just to show you how funny this is we we actually we actually tried to clear it you know
00:27:48.240
cut it with chainsaws we couldn't make any progress we gave up but a little bit down there was an actual
00:27:53.280
sign so government workers got sent to clear these to make this land impassable and then i don't know
00:27:59.680
if they're messing with us but they put warning signs that said danger uh uneven terrain ahead i'm like
00:28:05.120
like how you buggers like i mean we are in a forest to be fair yeah like uh anyways it was probably
00:28:12.160
their first time out there like let's give them a pass yeah let's give them a pass but um yeah it's
00:28:18.320
it's uh yeah thanks for letting me share that clip because it's it's unfortunate i i think it's again
00:28:24.480
it's another example of mismanagement yeah i think it's another example of mismanagement but it also goes
00:28:28.960
back to what we were talking about a little bit before was the lack of consultation with the people who are
00:28:33.120
actually using these spaces and people like yourself who are hunters like if you want to know what's
00:28:37.920
going on in an area like especially when you're in nature like who better to go in and talk to than
00:28:42.000
the hunters and the farmers they have so much knowledge on the land and what it needs and it's
00:28:46.080
so frustrating when government bureaucrats come in with like obviously we know these are people who
00:28:50.160
don't love and respect the land because they were littering you saw a beer can when you were out
00:28:53.200
there right so yeah these are the yeah i mean if he wanted to know about caribou ask us and we'll tell
00:28:57.520
him you know i'd say i haven't seen caribou but if you want to know where the elk and the moose are in
00:29:01.600
that area i would have told them gladly you know yeah it's too bad so marty just to sum up because
00:29:06.480
we know that you know the federal government they're going to listen to this podcast and
00:29:09.760
they're going to take our advice if there was three things they could do better for managing
00:29:13.520
our national parks sounds like we need some water bombers we need some controlled burns anything else
00:29:18.080
you would add to that list uh water bombers control burns and uh less bureaucracy i mean get you
00:29:26.240
know stop studying the problem and get it done because the the nothing nothing nothing we're
00:29:31.600
mentioning is uh is new to them but they're just never they don't seem able to act on it so get it
00:29:36.720
done just ask marty you can you can change your twitter handle to that just ask marty just ask marty
00:29:41.760
yeah marty thank you so much for joining us today i really appreciate it i know my audience will
00:29:45.920
really enjoy your insight as i said it's always nice to have a real expert come on and not just an
00:29:50.080
academic who studies these things but doesn't deal with them on a regular basis so we really appreciate you today
00:29:55.440
i totally appreciate the time cheers everyone all right everyone that's all we have time for on
00:29:59.920
this special episode of the alberta roundup i hope that you guys have a great rest of your weekend