The boreal forest is a fire-dependant ecosystem. The spruce trees, pine trees, they like to burn,” Bernie Schmitte, forestry manager in Fort McMurray, explained.“They have to burn to regenerate themselves, and those species have adapted themselves to fire. Their cones have adapted so they open up after the fire has left, and the trees have adapted in that once they’re old and need to be replaced, they’re available to fire so they burn.”
[ Hmm, that means there have always been forest fires. ]
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Read more: http://globalnews.ca/news/2673945/residents-on-alert-as-three-wildfires-burn-near-fort-mcmurray/
Australians like myself also sometimes face serious risk from wildfires, our forests are also “fire-dependent ecosystems”. It is normal to attempt to cut new emergency firebreaks during a severe fire, to try to prevent further spread. But an emergency firebreak is no substitute for properly maintained firebreaks which were created before the wildfire strikes.
Digging a little deeper;
Alberta’s aging forests increase risk of ‘catastrophic fires’: 2012 report
“Wildfire suppression has significantly reduced the area burned in Alberta’s boreal forest. However, due to reduced wildfire activity, forests of Alberta are aging, which ultimately changes ecosystems and is beginning to increase the risk of large and potentially costly catastrophic wildfires.”
To deal with this threat, the committee proposed expanding fire weather advisories to include potential wildfire behaviour, developing quick-response, firefighting specialists, and doing more work on fire prevention through the province’s FireSmart committee.
The goal was to contain all wildfires by 10 a.m. on the day after it had first been assessed, and before the fire had consumed more than four hectares of forest. This standard is met for the vast majority of Alberta wildfires, but it was not met this week in Fort McMurray.
The panel’s report came in response to Alberta’s unprecedented May 2011 fire season, which culminated in the deadly and costly Slave Lake fire that killed one helicopter pilot and took out 510 homes and buildings costing $700 million. The Alberta government’s Sustainable Resource Development department set up a panel to figure out how to deal with this kind of threat.
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The panel pushed for widespread fire bans, forest area closures, and elevated fines during extreme weather.
They wanted to deal with parts of the forest that presented risk because of their location close to town. “Priority should be given to thinning or conversion of coniferous stands, particularly black spruce, which threaten community developments (as identified through strategic analysis of wildfire threat potential).”
They pushed for more staff, and year-round staff. “Advance start times for resources, including crews, equipment and aircraft contracts, to be fully ready for potential early fire seasons. Ensure staff vacancies are filled as soon as possible. Expand work terms to year round for a portion of firefighting crews to support retention and provide capacity for FireSmart initiatives.”
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Read more: http://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/albertas-aging-forests-increase-risk-of-catastrophic-fires-2012-report
Understaffed, under-resourced forestry workers struggling to contain a growing risk of wildfire, a risk which has been exacerbated by excessive fire suppression causing a buildup of flammables, is a recipe for disaster.
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https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/05/06/fort-mcmurray-wildfire-climate-or-incompetence/
CaligulaJones says:
May 6, 2016 at 7:34 am
I just had to de-friend someone on Facebook for merely pondering that this is Mother Nature’s reply to the tar sands. Who needs people like that in your life? She also didn’t like it when I asked if the recent earthquakes in Japan were revenge for Godzilla…
Kokoweef says:
May 6, 2016 at 4:02 pm
Just like when the finch landed on Bernie’s podium the idiots said it was a sign from mother nature.
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socabill says:
May 6, 2016 at 1:24 pm
When I was young my family would vacation at Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernadino mountains (about 60 East of L. A.). This was back in the early ’60s. We stayed in a little cabin in Cedar Glen. I would hike down to Deep Creek to fish almost every day. High granite slabs with pines jutting out everywhere on one side, hills covered in pines on the other. A pristine creek ranging from 2-3 feet wide to pools 20 feet deep and 20-50 feet long and wide. Rainbow trout native enough to be wary of shadows and noise. Almost nobody else was ever there. It was heaven.
Then came the fires of 2011 (or maybe 2012) that roared through the entire area, including the little town of Blue Jay (on the South side of the lake) and the *very* expensive area on the North side. Those homes and the entire area surrounding them was razed. Blue Jay was almost wiped out and area where that cabin was (called “The Hole” by the locals due to it being ~700 feet below the waterline of the lake) was burned to the ground along with about 400 large homes and small cabins. All of Deep Creek, which runs to the East and below the lake was denuded and destroyed.
The cause? The Forest Service’s absolute refusal to clear out deadwood and undergrowth for decades due to the insane policy of the California Greens. The slightest match or cigarette could have darted the fire. Everybody with any brains, which was 90% of the population of the area, had been screaming at the top of their lungs for years and were simply ignored.
God bless those poor folk in Alberta. Hope the Leftists up there come to their senses (but I’m not gonna hold my breath).
God Damn the Green Blob.
Bartleby says:
May 6, 2016 at 8:51 pm
All great suggestions crosspatch. I’ve lived in a second growth redwood forest for 40 years and even though redwoods aren’t prone to fire, it has happened recently due mostly to the apex hardwood forest that’s grown up over the 100+ years since the redwoods were clearcut in 1898. Those trees have been dying as they’ve been crowded out over the past 50 or so years and now they’re plentifully intermixed with the redwoods and the redwoods themselves (which grow like weeds BTW) are at least 3 times more dense than they would be in a “natural” forest.
The result is we’ve created a tinderbox ready to go off at any time. We need to send in foresters to cut out the dying hardwoods and thin the redwoods, but the State (California) has no mandate to license and plenty of pressure from ignorant city dwelling “environmentalists” to resist any attempt to fix the problem. So the forests will no doubt burn, entire ecosystems will be destroyed, and the devastation that occurred due to logging a hundred years ago will be repeated.
It’s very sad when public policy is based on moonbeams and unicorn farts.
Mark says:
May 6, 2016 at 7:45 am
You might want to highlight the following lines from the Edmonton Journal article as well:
Alberta’s aging forest puts our communities at ever greater risk of wildfires, said the Alberta government’s expert committee on containing wildfires.
In 1971, more than half of Alberta’s boreal forest was deemed to be young, with about a third immature, five per cent mature and a small portion deemed “overmature”.
By 2011, that had changed to less than 10 per cent young, about a quarter immature, more than 40 per cent mature, and more than 20 per cent overmature.
“Before major wildfire suppression programs, boreal forests historically burned on an average cycle ranging from 50 to 200 years as a result of lightning and human-caused wildfires,” the panel found in a report released in 2012.
This really hits the nail on the head, aging forests have become a big issue in Alberta and it has been making disasters like the one going on by Fort McMurray inevitable. As a resident of Alberta it has become pretty clear that forest management practices are the main driver behind fires like the one going on in Fort McMurray and not climate change.
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MRW says:
May 6, 2016 at 8:34 pm
For decades the real forest nazis in Alberta were the Parks Canada officials in the Rocky Mountains. God help you if you cut down a tree or cleared out the underbrush. $10Gs fines. After the fires that occurred around the turn of the 21st C across the upper western states devastated everything–millions of acres burned–the Park nazis along with their US counterparts started to take a different look at it.
The CAN Park nazis found archival photos taken in 1890 (or so) in an old library file in Jasper, AB. The photos documented Indian management of the land. Areas surrounding Jasper showed savannas instead of the then current dense forest. That shocked them; they had never seen that before. The photos showed how the Indians cleared vast acreages of land around the town of Jasper and up the mountainsides on a regular and rotating basis for two reasons, controlling fire and protecting the animals. They showed how the Indians cleared the forest floor down to the dirt, maintained five feet between tree trunks, and kept the lower branches of mature trees at least 10 feet from the ground. This allowed the elk to move easily through the forest without getting their antlers stuck on everything. The photos showed that the Indians culled the pine (can shoot embers two miles) but left the fir (mature fir can withstand forest fires).
The Park nazis did a 180 and asked the lumber companies to come and take all the pine they wanted, for free. They decreed metal roofs for cottages, and if you refused, fine, but their firefighters wouldn’t bother to save your house. Ground-cover like juniper had to go; it was “gasoline.”
Etc etc.
So I suspect that the provincial northern Alberta fire greenies are going to get a talking to from the former nazis in the park.
Michael D says:
May 6, 2016 at 5:47 pm
The real problem is not the firefighting. Firefighting causes worse forest senescence which requires better firefighting in a vicious spiral that man will eventually lose – as evidenced this week in Fort Mac. a century of steadily improving firefighting (getting the fire “out by 10am”) has made Alberta’s boreal forests long overdue for burning. A solution must be found that employs some combination of selective logging and controlled burns. I speak as a co-owner of a lovely summerhouse in the foothills of Alberta that will burn some day if my family and my neighbours don’t get their act together and renew the forest.
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E.M.Smith says:
May 6, 2016 at 7:49 am
The Green Blob pushes for “let forests be natural” but doesn’t seem to get it that the natural state of forests is burning…
Put the fires out, you must do logging and thinning or fuel builds to very UN-natural levels. Ban logging, and put out fires, eventually the fuel load is so great it becomes an unstoppable monster.
Califonia lost a huge chunk of Yosemite Park re-learning that lesson a few decades back.
Absolutely nothing to do with Climate Change, though hot dry weather determines the timing of the lesson… every summer in California.
Joel Snider says:
May 6, 2016 at 8:14 am
I don’t know the situation in Canada, but in Oregon, government led by eco-activists have shut off almost any work in the forests, there are no work crews to clear out – well, basically the kindling – and therefore, the fire season is worse.
Once again, eco-activists igniting (pun intended) a crisis, all on their own, and then using it to further their agenda.
Can’t let a crisis go to waste has been created by ‘create a crisis to take advantage of.’
RCPete says:
May 6, 2016 at 9:24 am
And it gets worse. In 2002 the Biscuit fire burned a lot of forest in SW Oregon. Attempts to get the partially-burned/dead/dying material out through salvage logging were blocked by lawsuits until the trees weren’t viable to log. The same area burned last year, with the material from 2002 making a bad situation much worse.
The excuse was to “save habitat for the spotted owl” (who don’t object to nesting in K-mart signs), but as best as I can tell, it’s to prevent companies from making any money off of public land.
I have a national forest 2 miles from the house, and the underbrush is pretty bad. The only good news is that areas of dead trees from pine bark beetle infestations are actually getting cleared. I’ve lost one tree to it, and you have to be aggressive to keep from losing a bunch. (Broad areas of dead trees from beetles contributed to the wildfires at Yosemite, among others.)
Jenn Runion says:
May 6, 2016 at 8:57 am
Not just the Native Americans either. White settlers in the West routinely set scrub brush fires to clear out an area and make it more suitable for livestock, the bonus kicker was, it also brought more wildlife, making the area more hospitable to both man and beast. They understood the practice and learned from the natives that controlled burning is a good thing and prevented wild fires from killing their livelihood.
Old growth forests are not healthy ones. The problem is the IDEA eco-activists have over what is pretty, what is healthy and what is bad. Each one of those ideas is based on emotion rather than knowledge or logic. An old growth forest is not a park…yet they want it to look like a well maintained park and think that comes “naturally” when in fact it is the work of unseen humans keeping it that way.
Ragnaar says:
May 6, 2016 at 3:56 pm
“Ponderosa pines thrive in sunlight and require periodic fires. Historically, low-intensity fires caused by lightning or set by Indians burned every few decades and killed competing species that shaded out young ponderosa pines. Older ponderosa pines were protected by their thick bark. As fires have been suppressed, ponderosa stands have become crowded with mature trees competing for limited nutrients and moisture. Young ponderosa pines are then shaded out. Throughout many western states, including Montana, ponderosa pine stands have been taken over by more shade-tolerant species such as the Douglas fir.”
http://fwp.mt.gov/mtoutdoors/HTML/articles/portraits/ponderosapine.htm
The old growth trees drop their lower branches leaving a crown. Enough brush can allow fire to reach the crown. Small regular fires go up against the ponderosa’s ablative bark which protects the tree. The regular fires consume the brush protecting the crown. Crown fires can be very bad. Notice the lack of government. I recall the inane policy of clearing brush after some disaster in the BWCA. No chainsaws allowed. It’s the tragedy of the commons. It is commonly owned with whack jobs and lawyers having significant say.
Bruce Cobb says:
May 6, 2016 at 8:39 am
The Climate Campaigner’s Creed: Never let any weather-related disaster to pass by without connecting it to “climate change”, because it helps True Believers stay true to the Cause.
DCS says:
May 6, 2016 at 9:28 am
Early spring fires are relatively common in the Boreal Forest of northern Canada. After the snow melts in the early spring sunlight the soils dry. The dead vegetation from the prior year’s growth is tinder and will ignite like “wildfire”. A wet spring will alleviate the fire potential. The high fire threat is generally before the biota have awoken from their winter hibernation to consume the detritus (Mother nature’s process for sequestering carbon). This is the natural process of regeneration.
However, man interfered with the process because the wood fiber has value and we have assets that need protecting. The plan was to harvest the fiber and replant the forests. This plan has been destroyed by the Green Movement who seem to think that Mother Nature is wrong and the Boreal Forest needs man’s protection and an international accord protecting the Boreal Forest was signed a few years ago. The aging forests have a higher fuel load and are more susceptible to disease outbreaks . The outbreak of the Mountain Pine Beetle in Western Canada is in part a result of the aging forests and has further increased the fuel load.The wildfires burn hotter and are larger because of the fuel load. When they start (most often from lightening) near a community, the devastation is horrific.
We in the neighbouring British Columbia have experienced this devastation several times. Large areas of BC and Northwestern US burned during 2003 when the communities of Barriere, McLure, Louis Creek, Naramata and the City of Kelowna were burned. I remember the Sentinel Mtn wildfire back when I was a kid threatened my hometown of Castlegar. In 1950 a wildfire in the Boreal Forest spanning BC and Alberta border burned 1.4mil ha.
http://bcwildfire.ca/history/largefires.htm
BC now considers logging a valuable tool in controlling wildfires and has or is logging vast tracks of timber that was killed by the Mountain Pine Beetle. The Ministry of forest has a funding program for fuel Management We continue to battle aging forests.
With respect to the Fort McMurray fire, it started close to the town in a dry spring and rapidly grew fueled by strong winds that blew it into town. If it was not burning a town, it would not have garnered the attention it is getting. There is a much larger fire burning to the west.
This fire is definitely not the result of climate change but it is the result of weather conditions that have occurred since history. And in my opinion, the Green movement is complicit in this issue. Their misguided notion that trees live forever and man’s management or use of the forest is evil is ill conceived. It has produced over mature forests with elevated fuel level that have increased the intensity of natural wildfires. When they interface with communities, the devastation is heartbreaking and that is what the focus should be – caring for those whose homes, possessions, keepsakes, heirlooms, livelihood, and peace of mind has been ripped away. Those who use tragedies like this one for political gain or to push an agenda should be considered pariahs and shunned. There is no honour in them.
buggs says:
May 6, 2016 at 10:28 am
Great summary DCS. The intensity of this and other fires are a result of human meddling but not with the climate. People like forests because they are pretty/scenic/natural. All of that I agree with, but foresters and sensible people know that trees have specific general maximum age ranges for each species. If we’re talking about California redwoods, then fine, we’re measuring in the hundreds of years. On the other hand if we’re considering hideous poplar trees in eastern Manitoba, then we’re looking around 30 years; jack pine in the 40-50 year range, etc.
But we’ve had fire management programs going a lot further back than those age spans and as humans expand into areas ever closer to “nature” and we don’t manage those situations, either through controlled burning or logging (selectively) then we just build up the fuel load in the forests. As you mentioned, B.C. has suffered its share of fires and as I’m in Manitoba, we’ll see the same eventually in the eastern part of our province where cottage country is – the Whiteshell and Nopiming Provincial parks. I’m old enough to have watched 40+ years of cottage goers in those regions and if you threaten to remove any trees – well consider yourself immediately ostracized and a pariah. Yet those regions hold trees that don’t ever come close to what could be considered “old growth” as they simply don’t survive that long (aspen/poplar, various species of pine/spruce).
I remember being in grad school (ecology/forestry/entomology) over twenty years ago and having debates about forests because my thesis centered on successional processes in forests. One of my fellow graduate students was an eco-minded thing at the time and I loved asking her if we should allow logging? No was the ready answer, not surprisingly. I also asked if we should allow a forest to burn as a result of a lightning strike (natural occurrence y’know) and her answer was also no as we had to preserve and protect nature. Unbelievably she is a prof at a university now and still holds the same beliefs which are foisted upon students. Her answer to the lightning question is wrong because of what DCS summarized above.
Nature will find a way. Be it insects, disease or fire, nothing lives forever, not even forests. There’s a distinct human element at play here but it has absolutely nothing to do with presumed climate change.
alexwade says:
May 6, 2016 at 10:20 am
You will be surprised at how many forests need a fire. Some trees would be extinct if there was no fire.
For example, the southeastern US has a lot of pine trees. There are several type of pines trees in the southeastern US. The loblolly pine is a tall skinny pine with a deep taproot. Because it is hurricane resistant, it is the most common tree in the area. It will never blow over in a hurricane, but it will snap. Then there is the longleaf pine and pond pine. Both these pine trees must have a fire to survive, especially the longleaf pine. The pond pine seeds do not open until there is a fire. That is all well and good, we could burn a small area to get new pond pine trees. But the longleaf pine is special. The longleaf pine has a slow initial growth. For at most 12 years, it looks a tall grass. But during those early years, it is special because it can survive any wildfire. In a mature forest, new seedlings will lose out in the competition for sunlight with other trees. But if there is a wildfire, well the longleaf pine will survive the fire whereas other trees will burn down and have to start over. After the grass stage, the longleaf pine takes off. In its natural state, the longleaf pine must have a wildfire to reproduce.
Wildfires do a lot of damage to people’s homes. But forests need a wildfire every so often to be healthy. That is what the climate change hysterics miss. The only bad thing about these fires is that people are displaced from their homes. |
