Saskatchewan carrying out prescribed burns as 2024 fire season begins [Video]

With fire bans currently in effect, residents may be concerned to see smoke coming from rural areas across Saskatchewan. However, prescribed burns are being carried out to help keep many prairie regions healthy.

“Prairies evolved with fire so the fact that we don’t have fire is more of a problem. We’re trying to bring back a little bit of those burns, a little bit of those benefits in some of our park’s grasslands,” Dale Gross, a grassland ecologist with Sask. Parks explained.

These kinds of burns differ from grass fires in the sense that they are planned ahead of time with the necessary resources available to keep the blaze under control in the designated area, and will never be conducted in an area with a fire ban in effect.

“We’re in constant contact with local RMs, firefighters, Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency (SPSA). If there was a fire ban is in …