City of Williams Lake has a new Wildfire Risk Reduction/FireSmart Coordinator

Taya Vanderkop-Girard recently completed her Masters in Environmental Public Health focusing a lot on wildfire mitigation and adaptation.

Her experience includes working on the Elephant Hill wildfire in 2017.

“We were looking at recovery with Bonaparte First Nation looking at traditional sources of foods and medicine recovery.” Vanderkop-Girard said, “ I also had good exposure to a lot different aspects of wildfire recovery from there and different fuel treatments that Community Forest are doing as well.”

Vanderkop-Girard said one of the main goals she will be doing in this role is to get the community more involved in wildfire risk reduction activities.

“There are a lot of barriers involved. This can be mobility barriers, doing firesmart work in your yard, it can be financial barriers, mental health, there are so many things that prevent people from being able to take action when it comes to wildfire risk reduction. What I’m really looking to do with this position is to make sure all of my projects aim to reduce barriers to the community participating more in wildfire risk reduction activities.”

Vanderkop-Girard is also planning to get out into the community to introduce herself and what being the Wildfire Risk Reduction/FireSmart Coordinator role is all about.

“We’re doing a community survey right now as part of our wildfire resiliency plan. We’re looking to get feedback from residents to make sure that their priorities are incorporated into our plan. We’ve gone out to the community quite a bit to distribute flyers about the survey and it’s been nice to chat with some people and learn what some of their concerns are. This way we can make sure that we’re reflecting that when it comes to prioritizing different wildfire risk reduction activities.”

Her goal moving forward is to make a long lasting impact on Williams Lake and to get more people involved in wildfire risk reduction activities in the long run.