Last week in this space we talked about the fire danger, and how we have to take the "extreme" label seriously and avoid doing things that could spark a blaze.
This includes things like not discarding your cigarette butts out car windows or just dropping them on the ground (first, the littering is gross, second, if there's dry grass or bushes or bark mulch it's a serious risk). It also includes obeying the campfire ban, even on beaches, being very careful if you're using hot tools, not taking vehicles off road, and being careful when doing outdoor cooking.
Unfortunately Vancouver Island is also home to a longstanding fire hazard: broom.
Fields and mountainsides and roadsides and Hydro rights-of-way full of it.
It's gotten to the point where it would be very, very difficult, if not impossible, to completely eradicate it. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't work to try to control it. Not only does it muscle out native species and take hold just about anywhere, no matter how inhospitable it may seem, but it's also great fuel for a fire.
Broom contains high amounts of oils, and it therefore provides the perfect medium to spread and intensify a wildfire.
We were encouraged recently when the Cowichan Valley Regional District announced it has successfully removed Scotch broom completely from Memory Island Provincial Park in Shawnigan Lake. It took a huge effort, but the island is now broom-free. We should be encouraging our local governments to look at more such projects.
Thus far the province and BC Hydro have not been proactive in tackling the broom on their properties, which admittedly is where broom spreads faster than anywhere else (think roadways and transmission line rights-of-way covered in yellow flowers in spring). Given the expense they'd be facing to really do anything meaningful, we're not holding our breath that this will change anytime soon.
But what we can do as individual property owners is keep the broom out of our own backyards, whether that's off of our farm fields, or our city lots. We can encourage our municipalities to try to keep it off of our local public land (parks, forests, roadways). We can form groups and adopt specific areas to keep broom-free. It will take effort, and it's a fairly long-term commitment as broom seed can live many years before germinating.
We can also insist that when our higher levels of government undertake projects like road widening, where they clear off large sections of roadside they don't just dump some grass seed down at the end of the day and pretend the broom isn't going to move in like an invading army within the year (Malahat highway, we're looking at you).
With fire danger posing an increasing risk it's worth the effort.
