The increasing threat of wildfires in southeastern Manitoba is driving Indigenous and rural communities to build stronger firefighting capabilities, using new federal funding to prepare for harsher fire seasons ahead.
The Rural Municipality of Piney and Buffalo Point First Nation sit near the US border amid jack pine forests that, combined with climate change and growing human settlement, face increasing wildfire danger.
“We love to live within the forest,” said Martin Van Osch, Piney’s chief administrative officer and chair of its protective services committee. But that comes with mounting risks. “What we’re seeing, along with climate change, is a change in our forest age and the amount of burnable fuel that’s out on the landscape.”
To address evolving challenges, Piney, alongside Buffalo Point First Nation (which shares responsibility for fire suppression in the area) have received $204,800 in federal funding to train up to 60 local volunteer firefighters in basic wildland firefighting techniques.
Fire chief and councillor of the nation Drew Thunder said the fire department recognized the risks years ago and began upgrading gear and investing in basic volunteer training on its own. They purchased equipment, added new trucks and regularly partner with Piney through mutual aid. When the new federal initiative launched, it was an easy decision to sign on.
This May, the volunteer firefighters put their new skills to use when a tree knocked down a hydro line and sparked a fire in the bush and swamp. On the same day, another wildfire broke out in the neighboring RM of Piney. “Our training started on a Friday and was due to end on Sunday — the same day a wildland fire started here that forced community evacuations,” Van Osch said. “Our volunteers put their new skills to immediate use.”
Thunder said this is exactly the role for which local crews must be equipped.
“Let’s face it, every structure fire, every hydro line fire, every CN Rail line fire… everything turns into some kind of a wildfire once it leaves the main scene,” he said. The training they had just completed focused on learning how to defend homes and buildings when wildfire enters the community from the adjoining wildland.
Over the past 15 years, some stretches within Piney have burned three to four times, significantly shortening the age class of trees. “Historically, our forests aged 80 to 100 years between fires, but now some sections are burning every five years,” Van Osch said.
This shift threatens the seed source critical to forest regeneration and is changing the landscape itself. “[It’s] going from forest to savannah, which is more grassland and just as dangerous for fire, because fire can move quite quickly through grassland savannah,” he said.
With more homes and properties expanding into the forest, firefighting approaches have had to evolve as well, he added — but the local firefighters may not be getting the training they need to fight the fires that threaten their community.
Training mismatch
Despite having only about 50 band members and some 200 permanent residents, the First Nation can see its population swell tenfold on summer weekends, as cottagers and campers crowd onto the small peninsula along the US border. Surrounded by water and bordered by the mostly agricultural and forested municipality of Piney, the limited land base faces a dramatic fire risk.
“There’s one road coming into the community, so if something were to happen, it can drastically change and become very serious in a short amount of time, and we have to have the resources that we need to just protect ourselves as best as we can with what we have,” Thunder said.
Thunder said the training his firefighters received was not as advanced as communities like his had hoped. The firefighters completed wildland certification that’s suitable for containment and mop-up, rather than learning to attack advancing fires.
“Once [the fire is] out, we just kind of go on spot and clean up and make sure that it doesn’t pick up again and spread. But to be the first on scene and initially attack it — we didn’t end up with that training.”
Van Osch echoed similar concerns and said the training program is a crucial first step to address the shortage of certified wildland firefighters within the communities.
“Often rural areas tend to be forgotten,” he said. “We need to start thinking about fire in a more proactive way … and having better equipped firefighters to address fires when they’re still small gives us a better chance of ensuring that the fires don’t become large, landscape fires.”
He said this program is a starting point and not the complete solution. The training remains provincially governed, limiting local flexibility. Van Osch hopes this pilot effort will lead to larger reforms, building on lessons learned to better support Indigenous and rural firefighters.
Van Osch said the new training program was a year in the making, with both communities partnering to navigate Ottawa’s complex application process. “Federal funding can be challenging unless you’re a large centre like Toronto or Winnipeg. We are very small offices, there’s only three individuals that work out of our office here so to fill out and complete and achieve what’s identified in these complex federal grants can be very challenging,” he said.
Yet even with new funding and training, local crews are up against forces far larger than budgets — shifting weather patterns that are making wildfires harder to predict and control, Van Osch said. “We’re seeing spring rains becoming less frequent, snowmelt happening earlier and longer dry spells. These are conditions we haven’t seen before, and they’re worsening.”
As wildfires scorch Canada amid its second-worst wildfire season on record, over 7.8 million hectares have already burned as of mid-August 2025, with Manitoba and Saskatchewan accounting for more than half of the area affected. The wildfire situation remains severe, fueled by extended dry periods and above-average temperatures expected to continue into the fall.
The funding received by Piney and Buffalo Point is part of a $540,300 federal investment announced last week to strengthen wildfire response capacity in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
“We live in a very diverse country… one solution is not going to fit all,” Van Osch said. “We need to start thinking about wildland fires in a different approach.”
