By Transition Salt Spring – August 24, 2026
Salt Spring Island has been fortunate. We have watched communities elsewhere in British Columbia experience catastrophic wildfire: homes lost, people evacuated, businesses closed, lives disrupted. We have seen smoke drift across our own island from fires hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away. Yet Salt Spring itself has so far avoided the kind of large, destructive wildfire that can fundamentally change a community.
The question is not whether we should be frightened by that possibility. The question is what we choose to do with the time we have before it happens.
Our climate is changing. Summers are becoming hotter, and drought is placing increasing stress on our forests. Eventually, Salt Spring could experience that dangerous combination of prolonged drought, dry fuels, low humidity, high temperatures, strong winds and an ignition at exactly the wrong place and time. We cannot know when those conditions will align, but we can prepare for them.
Imagine Salt Spring during a major wildfire
Think about how our island functions. We depend on ferries for people, food, fuel, building materials and medical supplies. Many residents live along narrow, forested roads, some with limited ways in and out. We depend heavily on local water sources, and we have an older population and residents who will need assistance during an emergency.
A significant wildfire could affect far more than the neighbourhood where it begins. Roads could close. Ferry travel could be disrupted just when people need to move. Power and communications could go down. Smoke could make outdoor life hazardous, especially for children, older adults and those vulnerable to poor air quality. Our volunteer organizations and emergency responders could face extraordinary demands, and people could be displaced for days or weeks.
The effects would not end when the fire was extinguished. A severe wildfire could have long-term effects on our drinking water sources, wildlife habitat, soils, culturally important landscapes, and our local economy. Housing, already limited here, could become even harder to find. And there would be less visible consequences too: anxiety, grief and the loss of familiar places that make Salt Spring feel like home.
Our forests are part of the solution
Healthy forests protect soils, retain moisture, moderate temperatures and support biodiversity. But our island forests need help restoring the resilience disrupted by past timber harvesting, urbanization and colonization, now compounded by drought and climate change.
The challenge isn’t simply to remove fuel everywhere. It’s to ask how we reduce the potential for destructive fire while maintaining healthy, diverse forests. As noted in SFU’s Mitigating Wildfire Initiative report, human and ecological resilience shape each other, calling for approaches that restore ecological processes and strengthen our capacity to navigate an uncertain climate. On Salt Spring, that means thinking beyond property lines, since fire doesn’t recognize them.
Resilience starts at home, but it cannot end there
Individual residents have an important role. FireSmart improvements around homes can substantially reduce vulnerabilities: reducing combustible material near structures, keeping roofs and gutters clear, and managing the Home Ignition Zone (30 metres around your house). The Climate Adaptation Research Lab (based on Salt Spring) details ways for homeowners to build healthier, more fire-resilient forests. https://www.carlsociety.org/resource-hub/reports/reducing-wildfire-risk-on-your-property
Salt Spring Island Fire and Rescue offers free home assessments; book one here: saltspringfire.com/firesmart-ssi/firesmart-residential-assessments.
But imagine the difference if entire neighbourhoods participated. One FireSmart home is valuable. A street of them is better. A neighbourhood where residents know one another, understand evacuation procedures and help vulnerable neighbours is stronger still. And ultimately, we need to think at the scale of the whole island: homes, forests, farms, roads, watersheds and emergency response working as interconnected pieces of the same system. That is what community wildfire resilience really means.
Salt Spring has something extremely valuable right now: time
We can strengthen FireSmart participation. We can organize neighbourhoods, POD participation, and prepare for evacuation. We can identify residents who may need assistance and examine vulnerabilities in our roads, communications and water systems. We can manage vegetation around our homes while restoring the ecological health of our larger forested properties, bringing together Indigenous knowledge, regional ecological science and wildfire expertise.
Most importantly, we can begin treating wildfire resilience not as somebody else’s problem, but as a shared responsibility. The alternative is to wait until a catastrophic event makes those decisions for us.
What kind of island do we want after a wildfire?
The goal cannot be to guarantee Salt Spring never burns; no community can promise that. The goal is that when wildfire eventually comes, we have done enough beforehand so that most homes remain standing, people know what to do, neighbours help neighbours, and our forests and watersheds retain the capacity to recover. The goal is a community that emerges intact and recognizable.
We cannot control when the next ignition occurs, or the wind, or which summer brings the combination of drought and heat that severely tests our island. But every home made safer, every neighbourhood organized and every relationship built between residents, local organizations and emergency responders increases our collective resilience.
We have something communities recovering from catastrophic wildfire often wish they could have back: time before the fire. Let’s use it.
Photo Left: Ruckle Park by Angelik Ifurung. Photo Right: Forest Fire in Saskatchewan by Landon Parenteau