Forest fire suppression measures can actually increase risks around communities, scientist says
06 June 2020
Published by https://ottawacitizen.com
CANADA – A federal forest fire scientist has come to a paradoxical conclusion, finding that fire suppression measures in recent decades have actually increased the fire danger in some northern communities.
The first priority in suppressing fires has always been to protect human lives and infrastructure, especially homes, he said.
But around communities where federal and provincial measures have been suppressing fires for decades, the forest close to the town has become older because it doesn’t burn.
This creates two problems. Mature trees provide more fuel than younger ones, and there is also a buildup of dead organic material on the ground. The result is a forest that is primed to burn, close to where people live, Parisien found.
The results are not identical everywhere, but the study says there’s an overall trend “indicating a higher vulnerability of those communities to wildfire. These findings suggest that suppression policies are increasing flammability in the wildland-urban interface of boreal Canada.”
He works in Edmonton, and was there through the massive Fort McMurray fire of 2016. “I ate a lot of smoke from that fire,” he recalls. And he wonders: Did years of preventing fires just make that fire bigger and more destructive when it finally occurred?
Each year crews are sent in to do “prescribed burns,” usually in small areas and during spring and fall when fire is less likely to get out of control.
And fire is good for many plants and animal species “that have co-evolved with fire,” he said.
“The classic example is the jack pine. It has completely closed cones with a waxy coating, and if you try to pry them open you’ll just break your fingers. The only thing that will open them is extreme heat.”
When fire sweeps through they pop open like popcorn, releasing a “seed rain” — thousands of seeds twirling down like tiny helicopters. The seeds are also adapted to germinating in the charred remains of what has burned.
Aspen, white birch and lodgepole pine also grow back after a fire because they need full sunlight.
Parisien says it’s impossible to stop all fires in the boreal forest.
“Sometimes the best protection is to have a really good evacuation plan.”
His study is published online in the journal Nature Communications.