Forestry has long been a key pillar of British Columbia’s resource economy and is central to many regional economies, but for those who work in the forests, the industry is increasingly defined not by trees but by fire.
Every year wildfires force loggers, silviculture crews, and sawmill suppliers to adapt to a landscape where risk is constant, work is precarious, and survival often depends on quick action. Few industries are more exposed to wildfire, and few workers bear the burden more.
The vulnerability of forestry workers is not new. In August 2010, when fires burned across 20,000 hectares of northern B.C., Canfor pulled 300 employees out of the woods because of extreme danger.
“With safety in mind, we made the decision to pull our crews for the time being,” said company spokesman Dave LeFebvre at the time. Hundreds of others across the province faced similar risks; many lost income during the shutdown.
Fifteen years later, the situation is worse. The 2023 fire season was the worst in Canadian history, and B.C. recorded one of the most most destructive seasons on record, with more than 4 percent of the province burned since 2017. For those who plant seedlings, thin stands, or salvage fire-damaged timber, the threat is constant. Their job descriptions now often include firefighting: digging trenches, cutting fire lines, and pumping water on flames under the direction of suppression officers.
The problem is twofold. Forestry workers are directly threatened by flames, smoke, and unstable terrain, but they are also squeezed by the economic impact of fires. The loss of timber means fewer shifts in the bush or at the mill. Salvaging burned wood is a partial solution, but even that requires speed and regulatory flexibility.
As Bruce Blackwell, a fire ecologist, said at the BC Natural Resources Forum in January 2024, up to 5 million cubic metres of fibre could be recovered annually after wildfires, about 11 percent of B.C.’s allowable cut. But if not harvested within a year, the trees dry, crack, and lose value. In April 2024, the province responded with regulatory changes to streamline salvage permits, allowing sawmills, pulp mills, and First Nations loggers to extract fire-damaged wood before it’s lost.
That wood does more than just sustain industry. The BC Pulp and Paper Coalition has called wildfire salvage an “excellent, sustainable source of fibre” that stabilizes jobs and mills while helping to restore landscapes. The Council of Forest Industries says timely salvage “makes communities safer” by clearing hazardous debris before it can fuel another fire.
But salvaging is reactive. Mitigation is critical, and here forestry workers are again at the centre. On the slopes of Lee Creek in the North Shuswap, one of the areas devastated in 2023, crews have been slowly thinning forests, limbing branches, and wood-chipping fuel loads.
The work is gruelling: 60 hectares at a time, often over two years, done in winter when cold conditions prevent escaped fires. Experts like wildfire ecologist Bob Gray say that after a century of suppressing natural and Indigenous burning, B.C.’s forests are overloaded with fuel. Large-scale treatment is needed, but the province is years behind.
To bridge the gap, the government has started to mobilize the forestry workforce more intentionally. In February 2024, thep province launched a pilot program to train silviculture workers in wildfire mitigation, equipping them not just with chainsaws and planting shovels, but with cultural knowledge, fire-suppression skills, and climate-adaptation awareness.
The $900,000 program, funded by federal workforce development funds, aims to blend Indigenous practices with modern forestry techniques, to have planters and brush cutters become front-line fire defenders.
By April 2025, the province had gone further, assigning BC Timber Sales, responsible for harvesting on 20 percent of public land, a mandate to reduce wildfire risk. Their crews, working with the BC Wildfire Service, First Nations, and communities, are now tasked with thinning forests, removing unhealthy trees, rehabilitating rangelands, and expanding prescribed burning.
But even the best plans can’t eliminate risk. Employers are legally required to protect forestry workers, and WorkSafeBC is emphasizing wildfire readiness.
Workers exposed to smoke need respirators; crews in remote areas need hoses, water pumps, and escape routes. Inspection regimes in 2025 are targeting smoke exposure, danger-tree management, fatigue, and entrapment, problems all too familiar to those who spend summers in the bush.
Despite these precautions, fire still intrudes on daily operations. In August 2025, Vernon issued evacuation orders when the Boltres Creek wildfire grew to over 100 hectares. Seventeen firefighters, supported by helicopters skimming Kalamalka Lake, worked into the night while nearby residents and forestry crews waited to see if the fire would spread.
The evacuation order was lifted within hours, but the disruption was a reminder of how quickly work and life in B.C.’s forests can be turned upside down.
For forestry workers, wildfires are no longer seasonal events; they’re part of the job. From the sawyers thinning stands in Lee Creek to the silviculture crews trained to suppress fire and reforest, to the millworkers relying on salvaged fibre, the industry has had to adapt. But adaptation is expensive, and the risks are deadly.
The fires that burn the landscape also burn the livelihoods, so the men and women who work in B.C.’s forests are both the most important and the most at risk in the age of endless fire.
