Over 70,000 new trees have been planted in Narrow Hills Provincial Park since fire tore through area

Over 70,000 new trees have been planted in Narrow Hills Provincial Park after the destructive Shoe Fire ripped through the area in May.

The park, about 130 kilometres northeast of Prince Albert, Sask., is home to Gem Lakes and Lost Echo campgrounds, which remained closed for the season due to the wildfire. 

“There was a lot of enthusiasm to get the new life going back in the forest,” Pat MacKasey, a provincial park forest ecologist, told CBC’s Saskatoon Morning Tuesday.  

MacKasey has been the supervisor of a five-person crew who have planted 73,080 Jack pine and white spruce trees since July. 

Trees have been planted in an area in Pine Lake that had previously been wiped out by a windstorm in the 1990s, he said.

MacKasey says regrowth after that storm was slow, but new trees were eventually planted again in 2002 once forest health improved. 

“Unfortunately, the fire took out that and much of the park this spring,” said MacKasey. “All we can do is, you know, move forward and get the work done and hope for the best in the future.”

MacKasey said since the fire, he has already noticed greenery starting to pop up in the area, starting with fireweed, followed by grasses and sedges.

That’s been followed by trembling aspens, balsam, poplar, white birch, and “lots of” pin cherries, chokecherries and hazel.

“We do have some Jack pine germinating also within parts of the park right now,” said MacKasey.

“So the biodiversity is … coming back,” he said. “It’s very positive. You feel the energy of the Earth and the ecosystems rebounding.”

Saskatoon MorningMore than 70,000 trees planted in Narrow Hills Provincial Park after wildfire hit area

From fire comes new life, but sometimes nature needs a helping hand. The Shoe fire burned through Narrow Hill Provincial Park in a dramatic start to the 2025 fire season. However, work is already happening in the park to repair the damage, and recently new seedlings were planted.Saskatoon Morning host Stephanie Massicotte speaks with provincial ecologist Pat Mackasey, who supervised a small crew of five who planted 73,080 trees.

MacKasey points to two new projects crews are expecting to roll out next year, including a project site on the west side of the highway across from Pine Lake where trees will be planted.

He’s also looking into doing some aerial seeding next March on some project sites off Highway 120, near Narrow Hills Provincial Park.

‘Be a good steward of the environment’

MacKasey also notes that fire is “a natural disturbance process within the boreal process … With that comes new forest, new ecosystems.”

Some Indigenous communities have used fire as a part of their land stewardship.

“We are now learning in Western Canada from our Indigenous collaborators and Indigenous knowledge holders that there was tremendous value in using fire — ‘low intensity fire’ or ‘good fire,'” Lori Daniels, a professor and researcher at the University of British Columbia’s department of forest and conservation sciences, told CBC earlier this year.

In the spring, some Indigenous communities would burn off fuel that had built up over seasons to stimulate understory plants and thin the density of trees — a practice long used by Indigenous communities to help prevent wildfires. 

“You’re still maintaining a forest ecosystem around you, but you’re changing the amount of fuel,” said Daniels. 

Jessi Gerard, an environmentalist and a teacher at Bernard Constant Community School in James Smith Cree Nation, east of Prince Albert, says trees have been traditionally used by Indigenous communities to make medicines.

He says his community has lost some of its cultural knowledge and is now working to regain that.

“If we don’t have trees, we can’t … access those things,” said Gerard.

Trees are also vital to the success of an ecosystem, he said.

“Behind my house, there was a tree planting project,” he said. “Where there was an old farmer’s field … now it’s full of deer and other animals, and I hear … coyotes and foxes and porcupines.”

Gerard said he has noticed some communities are now clearing more land and cutting down more trees, which has a trickle-down effect on the ecosystem. 

“I feel like it’s just going to be taking us back towards the Dust Bowl era,” said Gerard. “The ground is not covered anymore, and it’s going to leave … the soil exposed, and it’ll just be gone one day.”

It’s important to rebuild after devastating events like a wildfire, said Gerard. The trees being planted in Narrow Hills Provincial Park will be good for the environment in the long run, he said.

“It’s important to be a good steward of the environment so that you’re helping [to rebuild].”