Photo: CTV

Fort McMurray

Some of the pre-eminent experts on wildfires and climate change will be in Kelowna next week.

They will be taking part in the Wildland Fire Canada conference.

Conference co-chairs, Kendrick Brown with Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) and Dan Perrakis with BC Wildfire Service,  together with program chairperson Steve Taylor (NRCan) have brought together more than 70 speakers on wildfire-themed topics of anticipating change, resilient fire management systems and landscapes and smarter, safer communities.

The conference will be broken into four main topics:

• Anticipating change - Scenarios, monitoring, risk assessment and prediction tools in a changing fire environment 
• Designing resilient fire-management systems - Strategies, tactics and practices to cope with increasing fire complexity and extreme events 
• Defining and managing resilient landscapes - Understanding and shaping  landscapes to facilitate successful fire management outcomes
• Planning smarter, safer, resilient communities - Strategies and best practices to create more fire resilient communities.

As part of the conference, several public lectures will be held at the downtown Kelowna library branch.

These will be held Oct. 25- 27. Topics include Are you fire smart?, a view from the trenches and changing extremes.

The conference runs all next week at the Delta Grand.