'Deliberately' set Walpole Island fires destroy wildlife habitat

CBC News

· Posted: Apr 22, 2025 12:05 PM EDT | Last Updated: 8 hours ago

The Walpole Island Fire Department says crews person worked "tirelessly" implicit the past fewer days due to the fact that of "deliberately" acceptable fires.

Fire Chief Bob Smith says it started with a brushwood occurrence telephone Thursday nighttime from a tiny passing cargo ship. 

Since then, it "kind of opened the floodgates and we got immoderate larger marsh fires implicit the weekend," helium told CBC News.

According to Smith, his 20 unpaid firefighters person responded to 14 marshland occurrence calls and 2 for structure fires since Thursday night.

Smith said outpouring and autumn thin to beryllium their busiest times of the twelvemonth for "wild land" occurrence calls.

Smith said now is not the clip of twelvemonth for unfastened burning.

"Typically, if they were to bash a controlled pain themselves, they effort and bash it earlier each of the wildlife commencement nesting. Unfortunately, this twelvemonth it benignant of overlapped."

Smith said wildlife like ducks, beavers, rabbits, foxes, muskrats and different birds that nest successful marshlands could beryllium severely impacted.

"These actions are destroying captious nesting ground, and earthy habitats that wildlife beryllium connected — particularly during this delicate play erstwhile galore animals are caring for their young."

The occurrence work urged anyone who witnesses fires being deliberately acceptable not to intervene and instrumentality a photo, if possible, and to study the incidental instantly to section authorities.