Boosting Biodiversity and Ecosystem Resilience in the Kootenays Through Forest Thinning

Enhancing Habitat Through Forest Thinning

At first glance, thinning the forest may feel contradictory to conservation – but it is a powerful restoration technique that helps ecosystems thrive and supports wildlife habitat use.  

In the case of Bull River, the area has faced widespread changes to its ecosystems due to decades of wildfire suppression. Rather than the dense thickets of forest we often see in the area today, the historic ecosystems in Bull River were more open, supporting grasses and shrubs and a wide diversity of plant species; the ecosystem was maintained by more frequent low-intensity fires and cultural burning/prescribed fire by Indigenous communities. Suppression has resulted in conifer forest ingrowth and encroachment in environments that typically didn’t support the density of trees, which ultimately have provided fuel that significantly increases risk of catastrophic wildfires that affect humans and wildlife alike.  

Our team will be enhancing habitat using a variety of thinning techniques: mechanical harvest, which removes whole trees using heavy machinery, hand thinning, which reduces the density of young, ingrowing trees and low branches in the forest understory using chainsaws, and understory clean-up, which removes deadfall often through pile burning or chipping. All these techniques will help mimic historic open forest and open range habitat on the Bull River Wildlife Corridor, strategically opening movement corridors while leaving patches of higher density forests for wildlife cover.  

The resulting restored landscape will have an increased habitat quality for the wildlife that need it most. Ungulates like Bighorn sheep should also experience an increase in diversity and quantity of forage and will be more resilient to predation by improving sightlines and travel pathways.  There should also be a decreased risk of wildlife-vehicle collisions and associated mortality by providing high-quality alternative habitat.