The prevalence of expansive, devastating wildfires prompting threat to communities has begun striking earlier in British Columbia than previously anticipated, indicating that the unmatched calamity of the 2023 wildfire season demands immediate action.
The rising trend of these wildfires is a product of climate change combined with ingrained forest management practices. These factors converge to shape a landscape conducive to the eruption of large, high-intensity fires, explains Lori Daniels, a forestry expert in British Columbia.
“Our society is already shouldering the burdensome cost of these climate-induced wildfires,” comments Daniels. “In the short term, our focus should be on reducing the vulnerability of our landscape.”
To achieve this, a crucial transformation in the management approach towards British Columbia’s varied landscapes is needed. Daniels highlights the urgency to move away from a timber-centric outlook that prioritizes conifers over less combustible broadleaf trees. She believes that initiating prescribed burnings is an essential move towards fortifying communities by cultivating resilient forests.
Daniels also co-authored an academic paper examining past century data and discovered a “sudden” surge in wildfire activities in British Columbia. This escalation was in sync with a warming and drying trend that initiated in mid-2000s; marking the past four years out of the last seven as the region’s most severe wildfire seasons.
Adding to the disaster, this season topped the records in terms of area burned in both British Columbia and Canada, with wildfires charring above 165,000 square kilometers nationwide.
Wildfire researcher Marc-Andre Parisien, who led the study, wasn’t surprised by the surge of high-intensity wildfires, considering the climate projections for the province in coming decades. Nevertheless, he confessed the reality struck sooner than expected.
Daniels admitted her belief that the forthcoming generation of fire ecologists would grapple with the new challenge of high-intensity wildfires; the reality hitting home within her own generation is a shocking revelation.
Increasingly, summers in British Columbia are characterized by scorching hot, dry, and windy conditions, ideal for wildfires to burn with an intensity that easily overwhelms suppression efforts, particularly as communities stretch further into the wilderness-urban interface.
Yet, climate change alone cannot be blamed. Concurrent with the mid-2000s warming and drying trend were pine beetle outbreaks that left significant portions of British Columbia’s forests arid, susceptible to wildfires. This led the government to greenlight extensive clear-cut harvesting to mitigate the economic loss from the beetle-damaged timber, and in the aftermath, replant coniferous trees to supply the forest industry.
Broadleaf forests, which don’t burn as severely as their coniferous counterparts, are typically removed, further contributing to forest vulnerability. A shift towards maintaining patches of broadleaf forests can lead to more resilient landscapes, better equipped to resist large fires, states Daniels.
However, wildfires do have a role in maintaining the health of the landscape by consuming dead leaves, branches, and other elements, reducing the fuel for high-intensity blazes. Decades of aggressive fire suppression have led to what the researchers term as a “fire deficit” in British Columbia, particularly near communities where homes and infrastructure are to be protected.
Parisien underscores the importance of all levels of government to work cohesively in transforming how British Columbia’s diverse landscape is managed, noting that the 2023 wildfire season is likely to act as a game-changer in Canada.
Climate projections warn us of what awaits, adds Daniels. We can expect a replication of this summer’s fires not only in British Columbia but across Canada.
Forests Minister Bruce Ralston is hopeful that the newly incorporated forest landscape planning system introduced two years ago will usher in a new era of forest management that values biodiversity, ecosystem health and community participation in addition to timber. Parisien seconds these thoughts, emphasizing that effective tackling of wildfires requires proactive planning. “We must indeed take the bull by the horns,” he affirms.
