Fires, Floods, and Forests
Published:
by: Peter Wood
- Forest Conservation
- Blog article
Over the past twenty years, I’ve had the opportunity to observe industrial forestry and its impacts in places as far away as Congo Basin and Borneo, as well as closer to home, in coastal British Columbia and Canada’s boreal forest. What has become very clear to me in this work is that poor forest policy and management create vulnerability and the potential for impacts that extend far beyond those created by the initial logging.
When my report “Intact Forests, Safe Communities” was released last February, I had no idea what kind of year lay ahead for my region, or how tragically prescient the report would turn out to be. Just a few months later BC experienced record-setting temperatures — a “heat dome” that killed 595 people1, followed by deadly forest fires that wiped out an entire town. Later that year, record flooding would leave many homeless, cause damage to major infrastructure, and initiate landslides that killed five2 people.
While much of this is correctly attributed to climate change, as stated in the University of Washington study3, there is a less-told, but equally important story of how a history of bad forest management contributed to the problem.
As per so many of the world’s forests, much of BC’s forests have been made more vulnerable to fires due to extensive logging. This is due to three main factors:
o Fuel: Industrial clearcutting is very wasteful, creating vast amounts of fuel in the form of slash (like branches) and whole trees that are cut and left behind.
o Heat: Logging removes a forest’s shady canopy, increasing ground temperatures and allowing the sun to dry out the forest floor as well as the newly created fuel.
o Spark: Logging roads increase access to remote areas, introducing a source of ignition and the likelihood that a forest fire will occur. Clearcuts also increase ground-level windspeed, allowing fires to spread more rapidly.
Young forests, especially homogenous hectares of conifers that are planted following a clearcut, remain vulnerable to fire for decades. Their super-flammable branches are low to the ground, creating a “ladder fuel” by which the fire ascends into the canopy, creating a hotter, more intense “crown fire.” They have yet to develop protective bark, so the stem is more likely to burn.
This can be contrasted with an old growth forest. When a low-intensity ground fire sweeps through an old forest, mature trees (species like Douglas Fir are protected by a thick, cork-like outer bark) remain intact, while releasing nutrients, and seeds, and creating space where plants can grow and providing feed for deer and other herbivores.
While fire is a natural part of many forest ecosystems (such as the dry interior and northern boreal forests), and can be beneficial, there is nothing natural about industrial clearcutting, regardless of what the forest industry would like us to believe.
I recently spent a week canoeing through an old growth landscape that had been burned five years ago. It bore no resemblance to a clearcut. New growth was already visible, and plenty of wildlife was using the structures left behind- partially burnt trees, and patches of forest that were spared.
While the situation I have described is in British Columbia, much of these findings are applicable for the rest of the world as well. Older, mature forests that have never been logged are less likely to burn, whether it be in tropical or temperate forests. For example, preliminary reports4 indicate that during Oregon’s record-breaking fire season in 2020, more than 70 percent of the area burned had been recently clear cut and was in various stages of regrowth.
In the same way that the fossil fuel industry has denied its historic responsibility for contributing to climate change, the global forest sector has denied its role in making landscapes more vulnerable to fire, floods, and landslides — events that are increasing in frequency and intensity due to climate change.
There are better options to take sourcing pressure off of our forests. Canopy works with over 700 companies to find low-carbon, circular options that take sourcing pressure off of our forests, like using recycled or Next Gen fibre to make viscose and paper packaging. Using what is traditionally considered waste, like post-consumer paper, sewing factory scraps, and agricultural residues to make these items, two important climate issues are addressed – eliminating waste, and preserving forests.
It’s time for a new paradigm in forestry that prioritizes ecosystem health and resilience to climate risks, such as fire. We need to protect the few forests that remain unlogged and manage our second-growth forests for the long term, ensuring that they mature and develop resilience to fire.
We can and should be doing everything in our power to tackle climate change and keeping fossil fuels in the ground is a big part of that. Increasingly, scientists are also recommending that protecting the world’s remaining primary forests will contribute as much as one-third to the overall climate solution and, at the same time, will absolutely be our best line of defense in reducing the risk of forest fires, floods, and landslides.
1https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-heat-dome-sudden-deaths-revised-2021-1.6232758
2https://thetyee.ca/News/2022/06/16/Five-People-Died-Landslide-BC/#:~:text=Five people died when an investigation into the event
4https://fusee.org/fusee/oregons-2020-fires-highly-managed-forests-burned-the-most
