Western Canada: B.C. farmers dealing with severe drought ponder ways to cope

Good morning. Wendy Cox in Vancouver.

Eugen Wittwer has spent years breeding his cattle to be resilient to the terrain and climate around his Bulkley Valley ranch. But severe drought conditions, which have plagued most of the province, has left him pondering whether he will have to sell 80 per cent of the 250 animals he has nurtured as feed becomes scarce.

“It really hurts,” Wittwer told reporter Xiao Xu. Wittwer has been operating the W Diamond Ranch for three decades. “If I have to replace some, it will take me another 10 years before I’m really back where I’m at now.”

As forest fires, especially ferocious in their number and intensity this year, burn up territory across British Columbia and Alberta, farmers and ranchers on land that has been spared the flames are instead suffering through severely dry conditions.

The Regional District of Bulkley-Nechako, or RDBN, spanning more than 70,000 square kilometres in central northern B.C., is among the hardest hit by drought created by a combination of record heat, early snow melt and low levels of precipitation.

As of July 27, two-thirds of British Columbia’s 34 water basins – regions that are used by the province to manage the levels and flow of water – are at Drought Level 4 or 5, the worst on the province’s scale. Areas under Drought Level 5 could see impacts to fish habitats, irrigation and water supply in some local communities. The number of basins experiencing the highest level of drought increased from four to nine between July 13 and July 27.

B.C. Livestock Producers Co-operative Association holds live auctions weekly at four stockyards located in Kamloops, Vanderhoof, Williams Lake and Okanagan Falls. According to Mike Pritchard, Vanderhoof yard manager, around 500 head of cattle would be sold in July in a normal year.

But this month, two auctions are scheduled in the district municipality nestled in the Nechako Valley to accommodate roughly 2,800 head. Pritchard said it’s “absolutely abnormal” for this time of year.

“You just never see it, unless there’s something like this, which is a drought,” he said.

Many farmers are also anticipating crop loss. Kelsey Oosterhoff in Bulkley Valley said the farm run by her and her husband will only yield a quarter of last year’s crops. The couple is crunching the numbers, trying to figure out how many cows they’re going to be able to keep over the winter.

The drought amounts to a second natural disaster in Northern B.C., as the majority of the province’s nearly 400 wildfires are burning in the region.

On Friday, an evacuation order covering 327 properties near Kamloops was scaled back to an alert as crews made good progress containing a wildfire burning just south of the city.

Earlier this week, a fast-moving fire just north of Panorama Mountain Resort meant residents in more than 1,000 dwellings were placed on evacuation alert.

Sage Randle and two of her friends had just finished eating sandwiches on the summit of B.C.’s Mount Bruce near the resort Monday when the hikers spotted a whiff of something in the forest below.

Ms. Randle told reporter Carrie Tait she and her friends were stunned upon realizing the faint whiff was a fire that soon had them running for their lives. An unmistakable wall of smoke was between them and Ms. Randle’s car, parked at the trailhead about three kilometres from the summit.

“There’s no way for us to get back,” Ms. Randle said. “It was growing insanely fast and we just had to get away.”

While Ms. Randle was on the phone dialling 911, a pilot for Glacier Helicopters Ltd., which operates out of bases in Invermere and Revelstoke, spotted smoke on the mountain, saw her car at the trailhead and realized hikers could be trapped.

A red and white helicopter landed in a clearing on the mountain, as white, grey and black smoke billowed thick into the blue sky. Heads down, Ms. Randle and her group bolted for the helicopter and were ferried to the logging road where their car was.

Ms. Randle, 26, still wants to hike this summer, but Monday’s adventure has her adjusting her approach. She now plans to pack a satellite phone, even for casual day trips.

“It definitely makes me feel like I need to be a bit more cautious,” she said. “I still don’t believe it happened.”

This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.