Fighting fire with fire: Sask. hopes controlled burn near Lumsden will reduce wildfire risk

WATCH: With dry conditions in the forecast, the province is taking preventive measures to avoid a spike in wildfires. Damian Smith has the details.

A crew from Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Parks, Culture and Sport conducted a prescribed burn on Friday near Lumsden, a practice that restores healthy grassland, removes invasive plant species, and creates a natural renewal cycle for new plants to grow.

“In this case, we’re trying to control some invasive grasses and shrubs just in the outskirts of Condie,” Dale Gross, who is a senior grassland ecologist for Saskatchewan parks said. “We want to prevent any kind of wildfire that may come up later in the spring.”

The test was originally scheduled for Thursday at the Condie Nature Refuge, but was pushed back 24 hours due to weather conditions.

Relative humidity, correct wind direction and air temperature need to be accommodating in order to run the test.

“We’ve prepared the site for burning, so there’s mold lines all around, control lines that help us prevent a fire from crossing it,” said Gross. “We have our equipment here with water. Water pumps, tanks, hoses, nozzles are used to prevent any kind of fire from escaping that boundary that we want the fire to be in and our skilled personnel.”

Similar tests have been run every year since 2019 and are done to prevent the startup of wildfires.

With dry conditions across the province, dozens of rural municipalities have issued fire bans, along with several provincial parks, including Greenwater Lake and Porcupine Hills.

“They’re concerned about early spring grass fires, which are almost all human caused. So it has to do with people being out on the farmland,” said Steve Roberts, the vice president of operations for the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency. “People are cleaning up their yards, so that is the highest risk right now. They are [the municipalities] are taking proactive measures to reduce the number of human caused fires that could start especially if we’re looking at a nice weekend. People want to be out and, but the risk goes up.”

After more than 590 wildfires last year, the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency is predicting a more typical fire season in 2025.