Cathedral Park Fuel Management Prescription

Cathedral Park is southwest of Keremeos, bounded on the south by the British Columbia/Washington State border, on the east by Ewart Creek, and on the west and north by the Ashnola River. The park is a popular hiking and camping destination, and features turquoise alpine lakes, wetlands, exposed rock formations of columnar basal, and quarts monzonite. The Park is home to mountain goats, rocky mountain bighorn sheep, bear, and several species at risk including, badger, grizzly, flammulated owl, sonora skipper, alpine anemone, whitebark pine, and tweedy’s willow.

Cathedral Park is a high-elevation ecosystem, with the park core area at an elevation of 2000-2100 m.  The prescription areas were located just below the sub-alpine subzone (a sensitive ecosystem type). This forest ecosystem is the Very Dry Cold Engelmann Spruce Subalpine fir (ESSF xc) bio-geo-climatic subzone. It is dominated by subalpine fir, Engelmann Spruce, western larch, and lodgepole pine on the driest sites. Wildfires are less frequent in this ecotype and often of mixed severity, with 35-200 year re-currency. Fire has been almost entirely excluded from the ecosystem. Furthermore, forest health issues, primarily mountain pine beetle and spruce beetle outbreaks have resulted in the death of considerable portions of the overstory stand (80-95% of the Engelman spruce and lodgepole pine). As a result, park safety is a primary concern as standing dead trees present an overhead hazard, and also present an increased wildfire risk.

This treatment will mimic natural fire regimes, by removing fuel accumulations that have resulted from pine beetle and spruce beetle attacks. The proposed treatment aligns with BC Parks Mission to:

• Protect and manage for future generations lands which represent the best natural features and diverse wilderness environments of the province;
• Provide high-quality and safe outdoor recreation that is compatible with protecting the natural environment;
• Increase defensibility of critical infrastructure and recreational values at risk (i.e., campgrounds, the lodge, cabins, trails, etc.);
• Improve firefighter safety and suppression access through the creation of more readily defensible stand; and
• Enhance the safety of park visitors.

Some unique features of the prescription plan include increased coarse woody debris targets, planting of spruce in campsite areas with substantial tree loss, high-stubbing dead trees to create wildlife trees and maintain structural diversity, and seeding burn rings.

Challenges of this plan include the remoteness of the treatment area. Access is limited to a steep single-lane road, with several old creek crossings with unknown weight loading restrictions. The steep grade of the road, (average adverse 9%, with pitches up to 20%), and switchbacks with a radius less than 8 m limit lowbed access. Machinery will have to be walked 14 km uphill to the prescription area.