The Small Fire That Protects

In the summer of 2021, a wildfire jumped the Nicola River in British Columbia. It swept through the area.

On the Nooaitch Indian Band reserve, in the Nlakaʼpamux Nation, a log house was left unscathed. It belonged to Joe Gilchrist's sister.

For about 20 years, Joe had been tending the land around it. He thinned the trees. He pruned the low branches. And every two to five years, he put a small fire through it.

Joe Gilchrist is a firekeeper of the Secwépemc Nation. He lives on the Skeetchestn Indian Band reserve. From 1982 to 2012, he fought wildfires for the BC Wildfire Service.

To understand his work, picture a house that is never swept. Leaves, twigs and dead branches pile up, year after year. One day, a single spark is enough to set it all ablaze.

Cultural burning is a bit like a sweep of the broom. A low-intensity fire, lit at the right time, in spring or fall. It burns off low branches, small dead trees and dry vegetation. It keeps trees from crowding each other. And it turns that fuel into nutrients for plants.

Each landscape has its own rhythm. According to Joe Gilchrist, forests got a light burn every 7 to 15 years. In the Nicola Valley, grasslands burned about every two years, which encouraged medicinal plants. Higher up, a fall fire about every four years helped huckleberry patches grow.

Along rivers, light burns strengthened the roots of cottonwood, willow and alder. Those trees shade the water and keep it cool for fish.

This knowledge, he says, was kept by matriarchs and passed down through stories.

A small fire, chosen, can prevent a big fire, suffered.

In the spring of 2022, near Savona, on the Skeetchestn reserve, Joe lit sagebrush with a drip torch. A patch burned in April was green by June. Its tall grass formed a buffer that slows wildfires.

The summer before, during the Sparks Lake fire, Skeetchestn members steered the flames into old prescribed burn areas. Those areas helped protect homes and buildings.

Yet this knowledge was pushed aside for a long time. When settlers arrived in the 19th century, Indigenous fire-keeping was banned in British Columbia. According to Joe Gilchrist, a fear of fire and wooden towns built in forests led to laws against setting fires. The rule became: hit fast, hit hard.

By the end of the 20th century, small controlled burns had become rare. For Joe, that way of managing the land partly explains today's megafires.

The numbers are staggering. In 2023, nearly 2,300 fires burned 2.8 million hectares in the province.

Small fires are coming back, slowly. In 2024, 48 cultural and prescribed burns treated 3,400 hectares, 23 of them with First Nations. That was more than double the year before. For 2025, the BC Wildfire Service planned 135.

It is still very little, according to Joe. He believes hundreds of thousands of hectares need fire.

A few months after the 2021 fire, an atmospheric river flooded the region and washed his sister's house away. The climate is changing, and no method protects against everything.

In November 2025, Joe Gilchrist carried this knowledge all the way to COP30, in Brazil. His message fits in one sentence:

Caring for the land also means caring for those who live on it, today and tomorrow. That "we" includes forests, rivers, huckleberries and fish.