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Wildfire plans and tree clearing in Alberta: the province's best management practices and FortisAlberta's plan

What Alberta Forestry and Parks says electric utilities should do about wildfire risk, how that guide treats vegetation and the Forest Protection Area, and how FortisAlberta describes its vegetation work.

Checked against the sources at the bottom of this page on October 10, 2026. Rules, fees and pay change: the source has the last word.

This page reports what the official source says. It is not legal advice: ask the office named here. It restates three documents as read on October 10, 2026: the Alberta Wildfire Mitigation Strategy page on Alberta.ca, the Open Alberta record and guide titled Alberta Electric Utility Wildfire Risk Management Best Management Practices (2024), and the Wildfire Safety page of FortisAlberta. The side by side with other regions is on the guide to utility wildfire plans and tree clearing.

A guide, not a filing rule

The guide is published by Forestry and Parks, was written with Forsite Consultants Ltd., is dated January 26, 2024 and is listed as issued on February 9, 2024. Its own description calls it a high-level guide to help utility companies manage wildfire risk and to set up a risk management program or Wildfire Risk Management Plan. The Alberta.ca strategy page lists it as a resource. The guide gives no clearance distances. It says that its list of laws is "not an authoritative list".

The Alberta.ca strategy page describes six themes: increasing knowledge, strengthening Indigenous partnerships, reviewing legislation, policy and governance, pursuing technology and innovation, integrating wildfire mitigation in landscape planning, and prioritizing hazardous fuels management.

What the guide says about vegetation

Section 2.4.1 is headed Asset and Vegetation Management, Inspections and Maintenance. It says vegetation intrusion and failure or malfunction of utility assets are key sources of wildfire ignitions. It names common practices as danger tree removal, right-of-way widening and vegetation management, aerial and ground inspections of asset health and vegetation, and infrastructure replacement or hardening. It says Alberta electric utilities already run asset health and vegetation programs and that their protocols are generally effective, and that applying a wildfire risk lens could make them more effective.

Its Table 5 lists four best management practices:

  • Evaluating and documenting the controls already used against each identified ignition cause.
  • Building a wildfire risk-informed decision process into inspection and maintenance programs, so that work is prioritized where wildfire consequences are higher, where ignition is most likely, or both.
  • Completing post work audits in high-risk fire areas to check work quality.
  • Identifying improvements to inspection and monitoring programs as technology changes.

The guide's Appendix 1 lists laws a utility may consider, among them the Forest and Prairie Protection Act, the Alberta Utilities Commission Act, the Electric Utilities Act, the Hydro and Electric Energy Act and the Occupational Health and Safety Act. It describes an agreement for the reduction and prevention of wildfires in the Forest Protection Area that sets obligations to reduce wildfire when power lines are downed or damaged by trees or other means. It also describes a Powerline Hazard Assessment Plan, which it says applies to all new power line builds within Forest Protection Areas. The guide defines the forest protection area as the geographic areas concerned with preventing and controlling forest damage from fire, insects, disease or other harmful agents.

FortisAlberta's description

FortisAlberta says its Wildfire Risk Management Plan blends established utility practices with newer ones. Its page lists regular line patrols, a vegetation management program that keeps trees and other vegetation at a safe distance from lines and equipment, specialized equipment in high fire-risk areas, early fault detection, fire-resistant mesh wraps on wood poles and enhanced powerline safety settings that switch off power within a tenth of a second when a hazard is detected. Under its strategy heading it says it maintains safe clearance zones around power lines and works with landowners to manage vegetation. It says employees and contractors are trained to modify work practices to reduce fire risk, and that field vehicles carry firefighting tools such as water packs, fire brooms and shovels. It names the Power Line Wildfire Prevention Task Group as a way it works with other utilities and the Government of Alberta. The page prints no clearance distances or cycle lengths.

Sources