A new plan for wildfire mitigation is expected to bring more forest jobs to the Clearwater area.

The Fraser Basin Council is working this summer with the Thompson-Nicola Regional District and BC Wildfire Service to do planning and determine exactly what work will happen, which should be known by the fall.

Senior regional manager Mike Simpson says the Fraser Basin Council has received funding from the province to do wildfire mitigation within the TNRD for the next several years.

The Clearwater area was chosen out of the three areas within the regional district, which included the Merritt and Clinton areas.

“Hopefully the long-term goal would be to support this sort of work in all sorts of communities,” Simpson says.

He adds the projects could bring jobs to forest workers who have been impacted in the North Thompson.

“And the analogy for that is, we did very similar work in the Williams Lake area about 10 to 15 years ago. And there was a downturn; when there was the downturn in the forest sector in 2008, 2009, along with the big worldwide economic crisis, there was a lot of workers available, there was a lot of funding programs for people to do that sort of work. And we had plans in place and ready to go.”

Of the Clearwater, Merritt and Clinton areas, a report done by the TNRD showed the North Thompson is of the greatest risk for experiencing significant wildfire going forward.