A Prairie on Fire: Indigenous Burning Practices and the Case for Rethinking Forest Management in Western Canada

Cover image - Paul Kane, A Prairie on Fire - The Wanderings of an Artist (1859)

A Prairie on Fire - supposedly illustrating the practice of prescribed burning by Indigenous people in the Edmonton area at the time of the occupation of Fort Edmonton, Alberta.

This article is motivated by a long term interest that I have had in forestry management practices in Canada, and increasing evidence that forest fires are being used as a political tool by left of center political and ENGO groups to gain further control over our natural resources.

Much of my personal philosophy on the topic of forest fires was gained from growing up between 1979 and 1994 in the Canadian Yukon Territories. For those who may not be overly familiar with this region and its geography, let’s just say that Yukoners uniquely depend on the availability of fire killed wood fiber for central heating and on the subsequent ecological productivity boost that forest fires bring to aging low productivity coniferous forests.

The reality of forest fires is so well engrained in Yukoner’s social consciousness, the territorial flower is the Fireweed, which is one of the very first plants to establish themselves after a fire (Figure 1).

Figure. 1. One of the first plants to establish themselves in a recently burned forest, is the territorial flower of the Yukon - the Fireweed.

While most lower latitude metropolitan Canadians enjoy access to affordable dispatchable energy, such as natural gas and electricity, for central heating, Yukoners know no such luxury. The remoteness of the region means that the regional population is cut off from national grid and natural gas distribution infrastructure.

Due to the small population and the large size of the territory (482,000 km^2), there has been a historic under-investment in building out such infrastructure and thus, since the era of the Klondike Gold Rush, have been dependent on fire killed wood fiber to heat their homes and businesses.

My Step-Father, made a living for a number of years by cutting, delivering and selling firewood and we used firewood to heat our homes. These memories are dear to me and some of the best include going out into the woods in our backyard with our two-dog team and sled, to retrieve firewood on a weekly basis during the winter. It was hard work, but my two brother's and I, who often struggled to keep up with our Father, became responsible in keeping the family stove stoked was a round the clock chore from September to April each and every year.

My first up-close experience with a forest fire was in July 1988, when a fire managed to jump the Yukon River and made landfall on our property just outside of Whitehorse. To this day I distinctly recall how us and the neighborhood kids ran to the edge of the river bank and watched the helicopters and airplanes drop their water and red fire retardant in an effort to keep the fire from entering our residential neighborhood.

At one point, one of my friends got hit by the red mud retardant and was laid out flat on the ground, as we had gotten too close to the drop-zone!

To us, the summer was fire season and the only relief we had from the smoke haze, was the arrival of colder - wetter conditions in the fall season.

As I have been a resident of Alberta since 2001 and am growing increasingly frustrated with the common narratives that forest fires are increasing due to our CO2 emissions and that we need to further suppress forest fires at all costs and even ban people from entering the forest during the warm, dry summer season, I wish to shift the focus of this article to the Prairie region. While the focus will be on the historical record, specific to Alberta, the implications extend across the entire Prairie ecological zone.

The two questions that I will ask and address are as follows:

1. Is it true that prior to the arrival of the pioneers in Alberta, grasslands largely extended up to the North Saskatchewan river?

2. Is it not true that fire suppression has resulted in a long term trend of reforestation since the early 20th century?

First, I will set the record straight on the topic of whether forest fires globally are increasing due to our CO2 emissions. Figure 2 includes stats from Our World in Data, showing that the area burned in millions of hectares are most definitely not increasing with our CO2 emissions. While there is significant year-over-year variability, there is no jurisdiction showing any sign that the narrative on CO2 emissions holds any water.

Figure 2. Annual area of forest burned by fire over the 21st century.

Second, it is well established that most fires are started by either accident or arson and Figure 3 shows data specific to Alberta, which on a percentage basis shows that relative to lighting strikes, human caused forest fires is on a steep rise and is likely just the result of increasing population.

Figure 3. Percentage change in lightning versus human started forest fires in Alberta since the 1990s.

Now that we got the facts straight, we can not dive into answering my two central thesis questions.

Figure 4 shows the ecological transition from Prairie grasslands to Aspen Parklands, where the latter are the buffer zone of the much larger Boreal Forest ecosystem extending from the far northwest to the Saint Lawrence in Quebec. My first thesis question is directly related this map and an alternative way to ask this same question is to inquire as to whether the current extent of the Aspen Parkland ecosystem is largely an artifact of non-Indigenous people’s influence on the regional environment since the late 19th century?

Alternatively, one could ask if the Prairie grasslands largely extend up to the North Saskatchewan River before pioneers arrived in Alberta and Saskatchewan?

Figure 4. Distribution of ecological zones across the interior of Canada, showing the location of the Aspen Parkland along the northern border of the Prairie climate zone.

Figure 5 is an additional map showing that the current Aspen Parkland ecosystem in Central Alberta, extends all the way up to Edmonton and surrounding area and the North Saskatchewan River than runs through the capital region of Alberta.

The Aspen Parkland, a transitional zone between grasslands to the south and boreal forest to the north, extended from southwest Manitoba through Saskatchewan into central Alberta, with the North Saskatchewan River roughly marking its northern boundary. Before widespread settlement, this parkland contained significant open grassland areas interspersed with aspen groves, particularly in central Alberta.

Figure 5. Current northern extent of the Aspen Parkland ecosystem in Alberta.

According to early Canadian historians such as Henry Kelsey (1690–1691), Captain John Palliser (1857–1859) and Paul Kane (1810 - 1871), prior to the arrival of pioneers, grasslands extended significantly northward in Alberta, reaching close to or up to the North Saskatchewan River in many areas. The historical extent of Alberta’s grasslands, part of the broader Great Plains Grassland Biome, was shaped by climate, fire, and grazing by large animals like bison, as well as Indigenous prescribed burning land management practices.

The native grasslands of the Great Plains, including Alberta, stretched from southern Canada to Texas, with Alberta’s Grasslands Natural Region covering approximately 95,566 km² in the southeastern corner of the province. This region included subregions like Dry Mixedgrass, Mixedgrass, Northern Fescue, and Foothills Fescue, with the northern extent transitioning into the Aspen Parkland, a mosaic of grasslands and tree clumps, near the North Saskatchewan River.

The Blackfoot Confederacy, including the Siksika and Blood Nations, traditionally occupied a vast area from the Rocky Mountains east to the North Saskatchewan River, relying on the grasslands for bison hunting, which further supports the presence of grasslands in this region.

Indigenous practices, such as controlled burns, maintained and expanded grasslands by preventing forest encroachment. Early explorers noted that First Nations burned vegetation to promote lush grass growth for bison, creating open landscapes that extended into what is now central Alberta, including areas near the North Saskatchewan River - as typified by Paul Kane’s A Prairie on Fire painting as shown in the cover image.

Figure 6. Alberta Blackfoot warriors lighting a grassfire.

Studies, such as those by ecologist Robert T. Coupland and the Matador Project (1967–1972), highlight that the absence of fire leads to increased woody vegetation in grasslands. For example, in moister grasslands, fire suppression allows heavy litter accumulation to be replaced by tree cover, reducing grass dominance.

A prime example is the shown in Figure 6 that contrasts a photo from 1915 versus 2025, from the village of Markerville Alberta, which is located in central Alberta just west of Penhold and Innisfail. Note the black and white photo shows the near absence of forests in the background, while today the entire village and surrounding area is heavily encroached by mixed aspen and conifers. From personal experience, it is routinely noted that farmers within the Aspen Parklands today, are regularly bull-dozing and burning aspen forest encroachment on their pasture and grain producing lands.

Figure 6. Markerville Alberta - contrasting changes in forestation over the last century.

On a related note, the Alberta government sponsored Mountain Legacy Project, which is the world's largest systematic repeat photography project from 2006 to 2014 that collected more than 3,500 high-resolution images of the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, with legacy photos have been digitized and repeated, has shown that the eastern foothills of the Alberta Rocky Mountains have similarly seen increased forestation over the past century. Figure 7 is an example of a select number of these contrasting photos collected during this project - note the increased coverage by conifers in the early 21st century relative to the early 20th century.

Figure 7. Mountain Legacy Project photos of a century long reforestation of the Alberta Rocky Mountain foothills.

Following the recent forest fire in Jasper National Park that almost wiped the town of Jasper from the map, this topic once again became a focal point. Historical evidence shows that this region of the Alberta Rocky Mountain foothills used to experience large fires every 40 to 60 years, but after the Federal Government nationalized this region of Alberta, fire suppression became the norm.

The prevailing understanding is that Indigenous peoples used fire to maintain diverse landscapes, with extensive networks of grasslands, interspersed with wetlands and patchwork forests comprised of both aspen and coniferous species. In turn, the landscape was resilient to large fires and was more productive, with improved biodiversity relative to today’s closed canopy coniferous forests that extend along much of the eastern foothills region.

Further south of Jasper, similar discussions and efforts are underway to deal with the century long build up of coniferous fuel loading around both federal and provincial parks like Banff and Kananaskis. Whether it is prescribed burning or creating large fireguards through logging, an urgency seems to be building in Alberta’s foothill region and in particular in our parks.

It is my hope and prayer that more Canadians come to the realization that creating provincial and federal parks, together with the practice of suppressing fires and banning logging, are in the long run creating unnatural, low productivity and biodiverse landscapes, which are prone to intense forest fires and not the kind that serotinous tree species require in order to germinate their seed cones.

As they saying goes, the road to hell is often paved with good intentions and in other words, we must come to the realization that Smokey the Bear was dangerously naïve.

Furthermore, it is also paramount that we stop viewing forests as a carbon sink that requires both protection and expansion. These ideas are part of why we are now at the juncture in Canadian history where we are at, where fuel loading is dangerously high in so many regions of the country and where public officials are literally banning citizens from entering the forest to limit fires.

In closing, I argue that we need more regular, low intensity fires and more logging, both done commercially for timber and for fireguards. We need to focus on diversifying our late stage coniferous forests, wherever logging is falling behind and where records show fires have not frequented the landscape in over 40 years.

The diversity that Mother Nature calls for has grasslands, with patchwork networks of deciduous and coniferous forests, which are used by both community grazing and grazing wildlife. Such a design is ultimately more resilient to large unplanned forest fires as grasslands and deciduous forests act as natural fire retardants.

If we do this, we will begin to see the landscape returning to a pre-poineer and pre-park state and a much higher productivity than we currently find through Canada.