Albertans can do their part to prevent wildfires

May 11, 2021

A few simple steps can keep your campfire from becoming a wildfire.

Did you know that recreational activity is one of the leading causes of wildfires in Alberta? In 2020, 88% of wildfires were completely preventable. They were the direct result of people not taking the necessary precautions to reduce the risk of wildfire; and that neglect can prove costly.

‘Leaving a campfire unattended can result in a $600 fine or worse,’ says Melissa Story, provincial information officer with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry. ‘If your unattended campfire is found to be the cause of a wildfire, you could be on the hook for the cost of fighting the wildfire.’

Here’s what you can do to help prevent wildfires:

Getting started

Before heading out to enjoy a campfire, check Albertafirebans.ca to ensure that campfires are permitted in your area.

Selecting an appropriate site at a campground

If you are at a campground, use the designated stoves, rings and fire pits. They are designed to keep fires from spreading and are the best choice for a safe campfire.

Avoid using sites that are near dry grass, heavy bushes, leaves, logs, peat areas or overhanging branches.

Ensure your campfire is on level ground and sheltered from the wind. A breeze can carry sparks from your fire to flammable material nearby.

Preparing a site outside a designated campground

Safe wood campfires should be within a metal, brick, or rock fire ring. They are required to:

be on rock, gravel, sand, or another non-combustible surface that extends at least one metre around the fire
have a responsible person in attendance to keep fire under control at all times and extinguish before leaving
have enough water on site to extinguish the fire.

Extinguishing your campfire

When you’re finished with the campfire, make sure you properly extinguish it. First, let the fire burn down well before you plan to put it out. Next, spread the embers inside the fire pit. Be careful to keep the embers within the fire pit. Add water or loose dirt to the fire pit and stir it around.

Dig around the fire pit and expose any material that is still burning before adding more water or loose dirt. Continue until you no longer see smoke or steam rising from the pit.

Don’t just bury your fire and leave it – embers will continue to smolder underground and can re-emerge as a wildfire.

Your campfire is fully extinguished when its ashes are cool to the touch.

‘Soak it, stir it, soak it again. By following these easy steps, Albertans can help prevent accidental wildfires.’ says Story.

Source : alberta.ca

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”