Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair announced Monday that Canada is experiencing its worst wildfire season of the 21st century, with more than 47,000 square kilometres burned so far this year.
I think the problem is the undergrowth, Canada is very sparsely populated so it’s not like they’re really clearing out the forest so to say, that way, when lightning does strike has plenty of kindling to keep the fires is going
Yes, that’s definitely a part of it. We’ve neglected to do controlled spreads of fire to limit these wildfires from being as devastating to the local ecosystems as they are. We’re also just getting off a particularly dry spring for the provinces, so that kindling’s ready to burn. This of course is accelerated and worsened by climate change. CBC has a whole article about the changing of our wildfires as its impacted by climate change. It’s a good read and I’d encourage you to check it out.
Good article, i think controlled burns are the answer, the question is, will the government actually do it or will they just sit on their hands and collect their pay checks per usual
Historically many indigenous people did this in the form of cultural burns. We wouldn’t even have this problem if we hadn’t outlawed it and committed a cultural genocide against their teachings. The myopia of our society is frustrating and continues to cause problems for us year after year. ^^;
These things do matter, but also, our weather patterns are dramatically changing. With record heat waves and dry spells coming in constantly, we’d still have this problem whether we’d lost the knowledge of forest stewardship or not.
Ya, it’s a symptom of the intersection of several issues. We see the wildfires and just focus on “fix the wildfires and then forget about it”, but the fact is that things will continue to get worse, even if we started on making things better right now.
But the longer we wait, the worse it’ll get, and the faster we’ll get there
Agreed. And while I suspect this place is better than reddit for it, I still won’t openly say what I believe the solution is as it’s not a wise thing to post on public fora. Systemic changes are needed.
That’s part of it but there is more to the story …
– a big change in logging activities, where previous practice was using brush piles (from delimbing trees) that were burned in winter was stopped (to save money), and instead a “where it drops, it stays” practice began, leaving massive amounts of dry fuel for fires to feed on (right around 2000-02 it changed)
– a failure of gov’t regulation to match tree planting numbers to equal the number of trees harvested
– global warming that raised winter temperatures, which allowed pests to survive in larger numbers than ever before and decimated wide swaths of pine/spruce (BC is a prime example)
I think the problem is the undergrowth, Canada is very sparsely populated so it’s not like they’re really clearing out the forest so to say, that way, when lightning does strike has plenty of kindling to keep the fires is going
The bigger problem is the hotter and dryer conditions.
I did hear about drought conditions up there
Yes, that’s definitely a part of it. We’ve neglected to do controlled spreads of fire to limit these wildfires from being as devastating to the local ecosystems as they are. We’re also just getting off a particularly dry spring for the provinces, so that kindling’s ready to burn. This of course is accelerated and worsened by climate change. CBC has a whole article about the changing of our wildfires as its impacted by climate change. It’s a good read and I’d encourage you to check it out.
Good article, i think controlled burns are the answer, the question is, will the government actually do it or will they just sit on their hands and collect their pay checks per usual
Historically many indigenous people did this in the form of cultural burns. We wouldn’t even have this problem if we hadn’t outlawed it and committed a cultural genocide against their teachings. The myopia of our society is frustrating and continues to cause problems for us year after year. ^^;
These things do matter, but also, our weather patterns are dramatically changing. With record heat waves and dry spells coming in constantly, we’d still have this problem whether we’d lost the knowledge of forest stewardship or not.
Ya, it’s a symptom of the intersection of several issues. We see the wildfires and just focus on “fix the wildfires and then forget about it”, but the fact is that things will continue to get worse, even if we started on making things better right now.
But the longer we wait, the worse it’ll get, and the faster we’ll get there
Agreed. And while I suspect this place is better than reddit for it, I still won’t openly say what I believe the solution is as it’s not a wise thing to post on public fora. Systemic changes are needed.
That’s part of it but there is more to the story …
– a big change in logging activities, where previous practice was using brush piles (from delimbing trees) that were burned in winter was stopped (to save money), and instead a “where it drops, it stays” practice began, leaving massive amounts of dry fuel for fires to feed on (right around 2000-02 it changed)
– a failure of gov’t regulation to match tree planting numbers to equal the number of trees harvested
– global warming that raised winter temperatures, which allowed pests to survive in larger numbers than ever before and decimated wide swaths of pine/spruce (BC is a prime example)