Ontario’s Aviation and Forest Fire Management Program has two main objectives when conducting fire management activities:
- To prevent personal injury, value loss and social disruption resulting from a forest fire, and;
- To promote understanding of the ecological role of fire, and use its beneficial effects in resource management
Achieving an appropriate balance between these two objectives across Ontario requires sound planning guided by policies based on extensive scientific research. In many cases, as in provincial parks, conservation reserves, and other protected areas, balancing the two objectives can be difficult.
Provincial parks, conservation reserves and other protected areas preserve a rich variety of cultural and natural heritage across Ontario. These areas provide significant educational and recreational opportunities for the people of Ontario, as well as for millions of national and international visitors.
Fires are a natural process fundamental to regeneration and ecological health in many ecosystems. The repeated occurrence of forest fires has shaped the rich natural heritage within protected areas across Ontario. In the past, natural resource managers sought to eliminate fire from most protected areas. But increasingly, protected area and fire managers realize that ecosystems in many areas depend on fire and other disturbances, such as wind, for renewal and health. In the continued absence of fire, these ecosystems change, habitat degrades, and protected areas no longer contain the natural heritage they were created to represent.
Fires are ecologically essential, but can also threaten public health and safety, as well as buildings and other values. Fire and protected area managers must balance the need to protect values, with the need to use fire to restore and maintain the health of ecosystems 
represented in Ontario’s protected areas. To do this effectively, a cooperative project between Ontario Parks, the Aviation and Forest Fire Management program, and Field Services Division, called “Fire in Parks and Protected Areas: Toward a Goal of Ecological Integrity”, is now underway.
Part of this project involves researching the role fire plays in ecosystems represented in case study protected areas – Sleeping Giant, Rondeau and Algonquin provincial parks. The project also involves the development of a policy and planning guidelines to help managers balance the strategy of fire control and fire use in protected areas across Ontario.
The new Fire Management Policy for Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves is approved for implementation. Notices regarding this approved policy are posted on the Environmental Bill of Rights Internet site at:
The policy document is available on line at:
http://www.ontarioparks.com/english/invit.html
