Wildfires -- a Problem of Who Controls Decision-Making in Canada
2024 "Wildfire Season"
As of September 21, 5,236 wildfires have been reported in Canada in 2024, with a total area burned of 5.4 million hectares (54,000 sq. kms). This is greater than 1.5 times the size of Vancouver Island. With "the season" still in progress, the area burned to date is almost twice the historical average of 2.5 million hectares, or 25,000 square kilometres. The Northwest Territories had the largest area burned at 1.67 million hectares (mha), followed by BC with 1.06 mha, Saskatchewan with 0.976 mha and Alberta with 0.708 mha. One hundred hectares equals one square kilometre.[1]
Indigenous Peoples, who represent five per cent of the population, are disproportionately affected by wildfires, as First Nations communities account for 42 per cent of evacuees. Thousands of Indigenous people had to evacuate this summer in BC, the Northwest Territories and across the Prairies, many from remote communities in the north.
Prior
to this, Canada's 2023 "wildfire season" was the most destructive ever
recorded, with more than 6,000 fires in total which burned a staggering
15 million hectares of land. This was more than six times the
historical average.[2] According to NASA scientists,
these fires released about 640
million metric tons of carbon. That's comparable in magnitude to the
annual fossil fuel emissions of a large industrialized nation.[3]
Boreal forests regenerate through fire, but the science tells us that the wildfires of today are not consistent with the pattern of regeneration they require. While the traditional cycle of burn and regeneration is about 100 years, the fires in 2023 alone burned more than 10,000 square kilometres of forest that had already burned within the last three decades. Deciduous forests which are usually more resistant to wildfires also burned.
A report from Natural Resources Canada states, "This disturbance has the potential to cause extensive post-fire tree regeneration failures, because immature trees cannot provide enough seeds following a fire." The report also states that in Quebec, more than 3,000 square kilometres of commercially harvested forest is now vulnerable to "regeneration failures." This amounts to between 300,000 and 400,000 hectares (3,000-4,000 square kilometres) of forests.[4]
Another concern is the long, slow burn of peatlands where fire can go deep into the earth and burn for months or even longer. Peatlands store close to a third of the total carbon found in soils worldwide, and Canada has 25 per cent of the world's peatlands or peat bogs. These fires are very difficult to extinguish which threatens their enormous contribution to carbon sequestration and raises more concerns that regeneration will fail in these forests.
Blame falls on the forest monopolies which pursue numerous practices which are extremely harmful, including clear-cutting, destruction of old growth forests, "reforestation" based on monoculture, the use of pesticides to get rid of "undesirable" less profitable species such as birch and elder, and logging of the oldest trees which scientists have shown play a key role in the success of forest regeneration. The result is unhealthy forests, failed reforestation, and the increased size and ferocity of wildfires, endangering communities and literally adding fuel to the fire of the climate crisis.
Logging and forestry, pulp and paper, and wood-products manufacturing employ around 202,000 workers across the country, with the majority in BC and Quebec. The future of the forests, of the workers and their communities and that of the Indigenous nations and Métis living in the forest, cannot be left to the whims of the mainly U.S. forest monopolies. Governments do their bidding and permit them to continue their reckless practices. The damage caused and the grave threat they pose is not discussed.
Speaking about the threats to regeneration, a study of the 2023 wildfire season in Canada published in Nature Communications states, "These failures, compounded by logging legacies, drought, and insect outbreaks, could reduce forest productivity and carbon stocks, and accelerate the transition from boreal forests to open taiga, prairies or parklands. Forest landscape changes from the 2023 wildfire season will have profound effects on forest ecosystem processes and biodiversity, with species adapted to early-stage or open-canopy forests benefiting, whereas those reliant on mature or old-growth forests being most negatively affected in the near term. The cumulative impacts of the area burned in 2023 coupled with the extensive anthropogenic disturbance legacies on the landscape will challenge the resilience of forest ecosystems, especially if fire activity continues to increase, as projected."[5]
Humanizing the social and natural environment requires eliminating the control of the forestry industry and other sectors of the economy by narrow private interests whose aim is only to enrich themselves. They continue to do whatever they can get away with. They deny the experience of Indigenous firekeepers, scientists and forestry workers as well as firefighters. This is a fight which concerns everyone and which the youth in particular continue to wage along with members of communities across the country. The need for the working class and people to exercise decision-making power and control is immediate.
Notes
1. Canadian Wildland Fire Information System.
2. Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre 2024.
3. Study, published on August 28 in the journal Nature, led by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
4. Canada's record-breaking wildfires in 2023: A fiery wake-up call.
5. Drivers and Impacts of the Record-Breaking 2023 Wildfire Season in Canada, published in Nature Communications.
This article was published in
September 27, 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/ITN2024/Articles/TI54184.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca