Experts Make Case for Letting Canada’s Wildfires Burn
Fires ‘reset the landscape to be less flammable,’ say researchers.
As climate change is fingered as a catalyst driving the early rash of forest fires across northern and western Canada, experts say the most prudent approach at this stage is to, whenever possible, let the fires burn.
Western Canada is now enduring one of the worst wildfire seasons on record, with hundreds of people fleeing homes in B.C. and more than 13,000 evacuations across Saskatchewan. But those studying the issue say the human costs of wildfire need to be balanced against research that suggests vulnerable forests are going to burn either way — especially given the mounting pressures presented by climate change.
Fire agencies in the Northwest Territories and British Columbia explicitly name climate change as a factor driving heightened fire risks. The federal ministry that oversees development of the oilsands predicts the amount of area burned by forest fires in previous decades could double during this current one.
”The question becomes, if we’ve got areas where fire can burn, the most responsible thing to do ecologically, fiscally and for long-term health is to let those fires burn,” said Toddi Steelman, executive director of the School of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Saskatchewan.
”If we don’t let them burn, we have to pay that account down the line… the forest will burn eventually.”
When boreal burns, less flammable trees grow back
Jill Johnstone has spent several yearsinvestigating the effects of wildfire on the boreal forests in Alaska and the Yukon and the Northwest territories. One of her discoveries is that in areas where forest fires burn severely and frequently -– a growing phenomenon in a warmer, drier climate — the typical black spruce trees that characterize much of the boreal are replaced by leafy deciduous species such as aspen.
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