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.
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)
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)