Readers can also interact with The Globe on Facebook and Twitter . “The fire comes up to @SCE land,” tweeted Aldern, “drops to the ground, and stays out of the tree crowns.”. To prevent fires, forest stewards in the U.S. and Canada must improve management. Climate enters conversation during U.S. presidential debate, Research shows hotter weather is turbocharging wildfires in western United States, Mountain pine beetle epidemic sparks wildfire concerns in Jasper, Spokane residents want to fan wildfire smoke back to Canada. Even so, areas that had prescribed fire within the last five years, particularly the last three years, did better. In Europe, the President said, “it doesn’t happen much because they manage their forests, and they manage it brilliantly, and they’ve been doing that for many years.”, Critics pounced. “It doesn’t reduce fire from happening but it reduces the intensity, how hot the fire burns, and the amount of area burned,” Nikolakis says. We need to, in the President’s words, improve forest management. Welcome to The Globe and Mail’s comment community. He blamed forest management. In California before Europeans arrived, forests burned regularly, though the tallest trees, the very fire-resistant giant sequoias, generally survived. California Governor Gavin Newsom told Mr. Trump during this month’s meeting in a hangar at a decommissioned Air Force base outside Sacramento, now a hub for state firefighting operations, that it was “the hottest August ever in the history of the state; the ferocity of these fires … losing 163 million trees to that drought – something has happened to the plumbing of the world.” He added, “Climate change is real, and that is exacerbating this.”. But the evidence for the efficacy of what foresters call “fuel treatment,” through selective logging, prescribed burning, or both, can also be found on US Forest Service lands. EY & Citi On The Importance Of Resilience And Innovation, Impact 50: Investors Seeking Profit — And Pushing For Change. Through careful forest management, loggers have earned credibility. Finns use lumber: Close to half of Finland’s buildings are made of wood. But, given a history of rapacious logging in the region, conservation groups have gone to court to block the harvest. are not really managed,” says Griess, comparing the western province with her past experience as a forester in Europe. Communities are starting to take a closer look at making their houses fire smart, thinning groups of trees that could pose a risk should fire come close, and even, in some cases, replacing trees with other less flammable species. He’s hopeful it won’t take reaching a crisis point for these projects to become more commonplace. The study looked at four high-profile recent fires: Eastmain, Que. As an online overview of the project makes clear: “The most effective tool to prevent fire is fire itself. “We hear a lot about the lack of technical experts to do large burns but small landowners can do prescribed burns themselves,” York said. We focus on specific aspects with forest fire disaster, such as: fire localization, fire propagation modeling, victim localization, victim health evaluation, and logistics involved with securing victims to safety. Four forest fires burning in northwestern British Columbia merged this week, forming an enormous, 118,000-hectare blaze. That’s ‘very ridiculous’: expert. “We need a bit of a paradigm shift in general in how our forests are managed.”. Joe Biden, the Democratic challenger, called Mr. Trump a “climate arsonist” and asked, “If we have four more years of Trump’s climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned in wildfires?”. Indigenous fire managers in the fire-prone region go in early in the season to strategically burn areas that are likely to light up. “In the end, I don’t think it really matters what is the worst or strongest cause of forest fires. Such cases are powerful evidence that selective logging and prescribed burning could allow many forests in California and elsewhere to survive climate change. The fuel treatment “really didn't make a big impact because it was so small relative of the size of the fire,” said York. “Climate dries the [wood] fuels out and extends the fire season from 4-6 months to nearly year-round but it’s not the cause of the intensity of the fires,” said US Forest Service scientist Malcolm North. “Climate change is having an impact and that has exacerbated problems caused by unsustainable logging in the past,” he says, “so the forests aren’t as resilient as they would be if they were undisturbed.”. And now a large, well-managed forest appears to have turned a high-intensity fire into a low-intensity one, proving that how forests are managed outweighs the higher temperatures and longer fire season caused by climate change. If you would like to write a letter to the editor, please forward it to letters@globeandmail.com. “Many things go together,” she says. WATCH: Trucker captures glowing sky as wildfires rage in northern B.C. Trump vs. Biden: Who won the final presidential debate? California's forest management isn't the problem. “One may argue that the fuel break can allow crews to put out a fire, which is true in some cases,” he added. Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” Green Book Award Winner, and author of Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All (Harper Collins, June 30, 2020). But Mr. Trump is right to some extent, as forest fire experts note. ; La Ronge, Sask. In terms of loss of life and damage to property, the worst fires in the state have all been in the past 10 years or so - except for one fire in 1991 in Alameda County. During his visit, Mr. Trump sidestepped questions as to whether climate change caused the incinerations. “Canada has been really slow. Southern California Edison (SCE) bought the 20,000-acre Shaver Lake forestland in 1912 as part of its Big Creek hydroelectric project is restoring the land to its pre-European status using prescribed burns, reviving bald eagle and spotted owl populations, and planting 30,000 tree seedlings. “The strip of forest may change fire behavior in the treated area,” said York, “but not on either side. “Forests in B.C. Peter Kuitenbrouwer is a journalist who holds a master of forest conservation from the University of Toronto. For Mr. Bull in Montana, as well as for forest managers closer to home, collaboration is the best bet to improve the forest sector’s public image, cut court costs and look after the forest. “I have seen a cumulative effort to be supportive of prescribed burns, and a lot of funding to support it, but we still haven’t seen a big increase.”. Rick Noack. “I do prescribed burns on my property but it took awhile for my neighbors to get used to it.”. ; Fort McMurray, Alta. Sign up today. And yet, explains Verena Griess, a professor in forest management at the University of British Columbia, if we did more to manage our forests, we could help reduce the risk of a fire. North estimates that there is five times more woodfuel in California’s forests, on average, than before Europeans arrived. The Chukchansi tribe has prescribed burning for thousands of years in the Sierras, and have been working with SCE to pass on its knowledge to private local landowners. “While forest management responsibilities typically align with ownership, natural processes—such as forest fires, water runoff, and wildlife habitats—do not observe those jurisdictional boundaries. In the United States and Canada, forest management has created a powder keg. 351 King Street East, Suite 1600, Toronto, ON Canada, M5A 0N1, Just $1.99 per week for the first 24 weeks, var select={root:".js-sub-pencil",control:".js-sub-pencil-control",open:"o-sub-pencil--open",closed:"o-sub-pencil--closed"},dom={},allowExpand=!0;function pencilInit(o){var e=arguments.length>1&&void 0!==arguments[1]&&arguments[1];select.root=o,dom.root=document.querySelector(select.root),dom.root&&(dom.control=document.querySelector(select.control),dom.control.addEventListener("click",onToggleClicked),setPanelState(e),window.addEventListener("scroll",onWindowScroll),dom.root.removeAttribute("hidden"))}function isPanelOpen(){return dom.root.classList.contains(select.open)}function setPanelState(o){dom.root.classList[o?"add":"remove"](select.open),dom.root.classList[o? Keep your Opinions sharp and informed. “But on the forest service lands it’s all fuel, and so if the fire gets in there you know it’s going to rage.”, But whatever happens to Shaver Lake, says University of California, Berkeley forest scientist Rob York, “There are lots of cases in the scientific literature of prescribed burns having changed fire behavior.”, When the high-intensity Creek Fire arrived at the Shaver Lake forestlands it turned into a ... [+] low-intensity “surface fire.”. Click here to subscribe. Weary crews fight to make progress against deadly wildfires burning across western U.S. Canadians helping fight California wildfires getting relief crews, but some replacements headed to Oregon, Due to technical reasons, we have temporarily removed commenting from our articles. The forests in California and Oregon that caught fire this summer, and continue to smoulder, are close to my heart. As such, federal and state agencies have developed certain arrangements to collaborate on management activities across California’s forests. Forest fires start in low brush (leaves, twigs, grass), and their spreading to the treetops depends on the contiguity of flammable substances between the forest floor and the treetops. Similarly, the high-intensity Rough Fire of 2015 turned into a surface fire after it reached Sequoia National Park, whose managers had been using prescribed burns for decades. To help with scale, while Finland is a third the size of Ontario, it harvests four times as much forest. A comprehensive discussion on the state-of-the-art works in managing forest fires is presented. Want to discuss? The project has been credited with cutting down on carbon dioxide emissions from forest fires by about 122,000 tonnes per year. He’s got a list of forest management practices he’d like to see implemented that could help. “But inevitably there will be a fire that the fuel break does not contain. Scientists say protecting forests from high-intensity fires requires more thinning and prescribed ... [+] burning like has been done in fire breaks. While longer-term licensing could provide the stability companies need to be more strategic in road placement, Griess says, there’s no one cause requiring a solution. Part of that is people, Martell says. Now we suppress fires to protect timber and homes, as North Americans increasingly build communities in or near forests. We hope to have this fixed soon. It was heartening to see U.S. President Donald Trump visit Sacramento earlier this month, to promote co-operation to fight what he called “big monster” fires and to help those left homeless. “The cause of that is fire suppression and the existing debt of wood fuel.”. Yes. The other part is the forestry companies. “We’re good partners with the U.S. Forest Service, and they have good people locally,” said Southern California Edison’s Stewart, “but they are not getting support from the leaders of the Forest Service in Washington D.C.”, “I think it would help,” said York.
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