It may be the middle of winter, but work is already underway to mitigate the threat of wildfires in the Bow Valley area.
Crews are constructing fire breaks, planning prescribed burns and ‘fire smarting’ communities to avoid a major disaster.
CTV News had the opportunity to take part in an exclusive tour on Thursday with fire information officers from Banff National Park, Canmore, Lake Lousie and the MD of Bighorn.
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All of the organizations are working collaboratively to protect the Bow Valley.
“Wildfires are not preventable, but we can help mitigate the risk,” said Canmore Deputy Fire Chief Mike Bourgin.
“Wildfires are going to happen, but it’s a matter of us working together. It’s a matter of us making sure that we have the mitigation strategies and suppression strategies in place.”
Construction begins on new fire guards
Despite several preventative measures in place, much of the Town of Jasper was burned last year.
It’s why those working on the front lines are taking a more urgent and proactive approach in the Bow Valley, installing a 165-hectare fire break in Lake Louise and another 220-hectare break east of Tunnel Mountain Road.
Work on the Lake Louise fire break began in November and will take two to three winter seasons to complete. The fire guard is being formed using low-impact machinery on the west side of the Trans-Canada Highway near the Great Divide Trail.
Woody debris is being piled and burned at two 35-hectare sites this season using skidders to bring logs to the site and a processor to cut the wood into lengths which can be sent to mills.
“This guard was set up on the west side of Lake Louise to prevent fire from sweeping in because of the prevailing direction of winds,” said Shelley Tamelin, a Parks Canada wildfire risk prevention project manager for the Yoho, Lake Louise and Kootenay/Field.
Tamelin notes that logging doesn’t take place near rivers or wetlands, but crews instead thin more sensitive areas by hand to protect eco-systems.
All of these fire guards improve safety for park visitors and residents, while creating high-quality habitat for local species including at-risk flora and fauna.
“We’re looking to remove fuel and to create a break in the landscape, and we take areas where there are already natural features and constructed features that would kind of limit how much trees we have to remove.”
Meanwhile, the Tunnel Toe Wildfire Risk Reduction Project is also in full effect.
Located near the east and southeastern side of Tunnel Mountain Road, the area will be thinned to reduce the fuel available for forest fires and to create a more open forest.
The Town of Canmore, in partnership with Alberta Forestry and Parks, has also now been successful in applying for funding from the Forest Resource Improvement Association of Alberta (FRIAA).
It means construction of the Bow Valley Fireguard will occur in phases over the next three to five years, which includes 200 hectares of forest mechanically harvested across Stoneworks Creek, Harvie Heights and the East Park Gates.
Bourgin says an additional 116 hectares of forest will be thinned by hand.
“This really shows the importance of all of us working together,” he said. “Prevention is the best defense, and it is proven to reduce wildfire damage in our communities.”
Between 2019 and 2024, Parks Canada completed two large landscape-level fire guards, one of which is the west side of Sulphur Mountain, adjacent to Banff, which helps to prevent fire from rushing up the mountain and throwing embers onto the town site.
Parks Canada is working on planning for an additional 1413 hectares of wildfire risk reduction
activities within the 15 kilometre radius of the town of Banff.
All of this work is a continuation of fire mitigation around Protection Mountain in Banff National Park, at Ross Lake in Yoho National Park and forest thinning near the Lake Louise Chateau.
‘Breaking up the landscape’
Wildfire officials note that prescribed burns all serve to aid in breaking up the landscape so that fires can be stopped and steered away from nearby communities.
The Sawback Range — only five kilometers west of the town of Banff — is known for its Indigenous history. It was home to First Nations pictograph site from the pre-contact area, but its location is fiercely protected by park officials.
More than 700 hectares of the land – an area five and a half times the size of downtown Calgary – was burned back in 2014.
Jane Park, a fire and vegetation management specialist for Banf National Park, say this work helps enhance the existing Douglas fire habitat, generate suitable regeneration habitat for lumber pine and keep mountain pine beetle populations healthy.
“When you’re trying to restore wildlife habitat or reduce fuel for wildfire risk reduction (purposes), you don’t necessarily want that full kind of forest of highly flammable coniferous trees coming back,” she said.
Park notes that the area needed to burn a few times because of the regenerative lodgepole pine trees, which have adapted to fire.
“By burning at another time prior to the lodgepole pine having cones, we can actually convert that standing timber for us to this beautiful Douglas fir grassland, and this is more typical of what – over 100 years ago – this valley would have looked like.”
Another prescribed burn may be planned in the future, but further environmental assessments are needed, including engagement with stakeholders.
For now, Park says her team is keeping a close eye on vegetation for ecological and fuel reduction purposes.
“All of those pieces of the puzzle are coming together over decades of work, but there’s obviously lots of work that still can be done.”
Town of Banff works to reduce wildfire risk
Banff Town Council has directed more than $1.3 million in 2025 to be spent on two main components of wildfire mitigation work within the less-than-four square-kilometre town site.
The first component involves the contracting of Outland Forestry Services to thin forests and remove trees from almost 20 hectares of town-managed land across the perimeter of town.
The second component features an aggressive plan to apply FireSmart principles to municipal buildings, parks and critical infrastructure.
An additional $100,000 is being spent to update the tactical wildfire response plan and purchase more equipment for structural protection in town, plus almost $100,000 worth of rebates available to homeowners who ‘FireSmart’ their homes and yards.
One of the most prominent FireSmart neighbourhoods in Banff is the community of Valleyview, which has cleared much of its nearby flammable coniferous trees and juniper bushes, and installed sprinkler systems on homes.
“So far, we’ve removed approximately 87,000 kilograms of fuel from our neighbourhood,” said Chris Worobets, a long-time community member.
“A number of people here are also taking advantage of the Town of Banff’s sprinkler system, so we install these sprinkler kits right on our roofs, they give complete coverage over a ten-metre radius.”
The sprinkler kits can be quickly installed or removed by using a long pole or a garbage picker, which aids in attaching it to the gutter of a roof.
The kits also come with a seven-metre-long fire hose.
Kits can be purchased though the Town of Banff at a discounted price of $65.
“By doing this, we’re hoping we can increase the survivability of our properties,” Worbets added. “You don’t even have to be home if you haven’t pre-deployed your system before you left home for a holiday or whatever.”
“Neighbors can go in if we’ve got it marked on a map, key people in the property will know where the sprinkler systems are and hopefully be able to deploy them before evacuation notices are given.”
Banff Fire Chief Kari Martens applauds the FireSmart initiative, and says her team has aided in the clearing of close to 75 hectares of vegetation inside the municipality.
“This neighborhood has also done a lot of work to harden their own structures to the threats of wildfires,” she said.
A FireSmart Home Assessment involves an evaluator with the Banff Fire Department visiting a home for approximately 30 minutes to provide recommendations on how to improve a structure for wildfire preparedness.
Incentives are also offered to homeowners for making fire prevention changes.
To date, 114 property owners in Banff have also been offered financial incentives to replace combustible wood shingles.
There are 211 homes however, which still have wood shake or shingle roofs.
The town provides $1,200 per home to help offset the costs.
