Solutions

It is important to understand that wildfires may occur as a natural process. It can be a way that the environment can cleanse itself. The key is to look at long term solutions. These solutions will place an emphasis on the root causes of extreme wildfires and how to minimize the impact on communities.

First, there must be a change in fire suppression policies.

• “North American forest management policies and practices over the past 100 years have had the unfortunate consequence of creating conditions that make forest fires burn hotter and with greater severity. During this time, fires have been put out as quickly as possible in order to “protect” timber and private property. The problem is that this allows dead plant matter (dead trees, fallen branches, leaves, small shrubs, brush) to collect on the forest floor, which creates larger and larger “fuel loads”. So instead of small fires that occur frequently, we end up with large fires that create incredible damage.”

Second, there must be a change to how we design our communities.

• More and more people are moving further and further into forested areas, which greatly increase the length of the border between forests and homes. This boundary between forests and human settlement is referred to as the ‘wildland-urban interface’. The ever-increasing size of this interface not only increases the chance of contact with fire, but it dilutes the limited firefighting resources. Firefighters focus on saving houses and families before they work at the source of the fire. This is clearly the right choice, but bringing in more firefighters and water bombers may not be the best way to prevent forest fires from destroying our homes.

Third, there still needs to be a continuation of education on how to prevent man-made fires with a stronger effort to prevent climate change.

• The increase in hot, dry weather is likely the result of global climate change, and it is predicted to get worse. The hot weather dehydrates the fuel on the forest floor, creating perfect conditions for fire. The dryness of the weather also prevents fire dampening from rain.

While there are areas where “thinning” a forest can help, it is a very expensive endeavor. Most of the trees that need to be removed are small in diameter, and have little or no commercial value. Therefore, in order to offset the very high cost of thinning, logging companies are often given the rights to cut the large, old, fire-resistant trees in the forest. This compromises the intent to thin the forest to protect ecosystem values, as this type of logging does not mimic natural patterns, and fire resistant trees are removed. Furthermore, the impact on sensitive soils from machinery used in logging damages the ecosystem. Forest 101 Solutions

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