A mess of boughs and scrub was left behind after a spring clearing of brush along the White Pass and Yukon Route Railway north of Carcross, and it’s stirring concern in the local fire chief.

“Through Mount Lorne, it’s a big, long stretch of dried wood that’s ready to get lit,” Colin O’Neill, chief of the Mount Lorne Volunteer Fire Department, said in a recent interview.

“It’s not green material; it’s material that’s sitting there and drying ... it concerns me that it sits that way.”

Trees and shrubs along to the railway near the Robinson Roadhouse have been ripped from their roots, or crudely sawed off, and abandoned in the rights-of-way on both sides of the railroad.

O’Neil estimates the clearing goes 7.5 to nine metres (25 to 30 feet) into the woods on either side of the tracks.

“Small tinder and large fuels have just been left,” he said, explaining that any dry wood left on the ground is considered fuel for fire.

“Anytime that we do FireSmarting in the community, all of that brush has to get burned or chipped. That’s the rules for FireSmarting.”

That’s not what’s happened by the rails near Carcross, he said.

Kevin Barr, the NDP MLA for Mount Lorne-Southern Lakes, said this week it’s a tangle of twigs and branches for as far as the eye could see in either direction from his vantage point. He went to scope out the scene near the Robinson Roadhouse.

Of course, the rail line curves, so it’s hard to know the extent of the clearing job simply from peering down the line, he said.

Barr said the debris is also dangerous for animals.

“Animals, including caribou that are running through the bush in the snow, the shards go up into their legs; that’s part of the problem of doing it like this.”

Barr said some trees have been hacked up to a foot from the ground, and there are broken branches and splintered stumps throughout the area.

Normally when brush is cleared along a road or railway, the wood is cut up into chips, or sawed into “manageable lengths” so that people who want it can take it to use as firewood in their homes, said Barr.

Since this clearing was done, Barr has received calls from constituents complaining that they can’t walk in the area because of the mess.

The Yukon government is not responsible for maintaining the White Pass and Yukon Route Railway, as it’s a privately owned track.

“Our brush crews did not do anything near Robinson Roadhouse; definitely, we were not involved in any of that,” confirmed Erin Loxam, a spokesperson for the Department of Highways and Public Works.

White Pass owns and operates the rails and rights-of-way alongside the tracks from Whitehorse to Skagway, Alaska.

The company is responsible for taking care of the tracts of land that line the rails.

White Pass started clearing in the area near Carcross in the spring. The purpose was to obtain better access to the telegraph wire, which the company helps to maintain, and to “generally take a better look at areas along the right-of-way,” said Tyler Rose, executive director of human resources and strategic planning at the railway company.

He said some of the debris from the spring’s brush clearing was left at the site.

White Pass and Yukon Route has plans to remove the debris, said Rose. He couldn’t say definitively when it will happen.

“We intend to go in at some point in the year and get that cleared out,” he said.

“We may send some folks up there to do some cleanup in the fall, once the active service into Carcross ends.”

The railway hasn’t been contacted by anyone to say the debris poses a fire hazard, or any kind of risk to people or animals, said Rose.

If the brush left in the rights-of-way is identified as a safety risk, the time-frame for cleaning it up would become “more immediate,” he said.

Rose said he “would assume we get it cleared before the snow falls.”

Transport Canada is tasked with monitoring railway companies to make sure they comply with federal rules and safety standards. The department also performs safety inspections.

A Transport Canada spokesperson could not confirm or deny if debris left by White Pass near the rail line north of Carcross violates any regulations, or failed to meet safety standards. The federal department is “not aware of this specific occurrence of brush clearing,” the spokesperson said.

The White Pass and Yukon Route railway is owned by TWC Enterprises Ltd., a Toronto-based company.

In addition to the railway, TWC Enterprises owns and operates golf clubs in Ontario, Quebec and Florida, and three docks used mostly for cruise ships.

Canadian Pacific Railway and CN Rail have guidelines for vegetation control along their tracks that are publicly available online.

These companies cut brush along their tracks for a variety of safety and environmental reasons.

Sparks from braking trains that land on dry weeds and in hot conditions can cause fires.

Overhanging branches can block railway signs or signals, according to a document on CN’s pest management and vegetation control plan.

Maintenance crews must be able to work safely next to the tracks, and bushes and trees can get in the way of that.

Animals, particularly bears, graze on berries and shrubs that grow in right-of-way zones.

Clearing these bushes helps keep animals at a safe distance from the tracks.