Good forest managment wouldn’t protect Nova Scotia from an unprecedented drought. I agree that proper forest management is important and may decrease risk in parts of Nova Scotia, but I think it’s dangerous to focus on it in a scenario like the current one - an unprecedented drought.
Bad forest management (logging patterns, over-suppression of fires) creates regional problems, not wide-scale, global, burning of our forests.
Unfortunately, even the best forest management practices of the past wouldn’t save the forests from what’s happening now due to climate change.
Why do I think it’s dangerous to focus on? Citing “bad forest management” is often used (especially by the right-wing) to distract from the real issue causing unprecedented levels of forest burning: human-caused climate change, led primarily by the burning of fossil fuels. I’d also posit that those same right-wing capitalists were (and are) the ones lobbying for more access to forests for clear-cutting, widespread use of herbicides, and screaming bloody murder when every single fire wasn’t immediately suppressed to protect their livelihood.
Our best method of forest management, controlled burns, as we’ve learned from the First Nations, is not enough, and isn’t effective if young, recovering forests reburn at the drop of a cigarette (https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/eap.3023). Prescribed burning worked when forests didn’t burn for a long time and became risky and dangerous, so the ancestors (and now our modern forest managers, growing since the 1950s) would force them to burn in as safe a manner as possible, preventing a future, local disaster. But if young, fresh forests burn uncontrollably, there’s not much prescribed burns can do for us. Prescribed burns may still work in targeted areas, but it isn’t feasible to scale to Canada’s vast, forest wilderness.
Better logging practices would definitely help reduce wildfire danger regionally, but on a whole-province (let alone whole-country) scale the impact would be partial at best. Areas where healthy forests have been clear-cut, and herbicides have been used to “shape” monoculture new growth, are definitely more at risk and will put the areas around them somewhat more at risk. However, probably over 60% of Nova Scotia is considered natural forest, and the current drought and dryness of the vegetation has led to high fire risk across the board. (It’s also important to note that NS has started moving towards better practices in recent years, with clearcutting reduced from a decade ago and more focused on at-risk forests and selective cutting - though they may not be moving fast enough. Probably due to lobbying by logging companies whose product is about to burn anyway…)
To reduce wildfire risk we’re going to have to start exploring drastic, interventionalist methods of forest management, and there’s no telling which of them will work and what the consequences will be. Tree thinning, deadwood removal, massive fire break development, etc. are on the docket for managing our forests in the future. These are expensive, difficult to scale, intrusive, unnatural, and could drastically affect ecosystems. I foresee at least some of these being called out in the future as bad forest management due to some other ecological catastrophe they’ve fomented.
(Or we could work harder to stop/reverse climate change, and/or accept our forest-less sub-tropical-desert future.)
Maybe “bad forest management” is part of the problem, but the level and scale of dry forests we’re experiencing now far outweighs its effects. So we should be very careful going down the path of using it to blame on our current issues.
I agree with your sentiment. That’s why I listed climate change before mentioning forestry practices.
We aren’t in an either/or scenario. Nova Scotia needs to do more to limit GHG emissions. On top of improving public transit, using more efficient heating/cooling solutions, reducing GHG intensity of power generation, etc; Nova Scotia needs to reform forestry practices.
Good forest managment wouldn’t protect Nova Scotia from an unprecedented drought. I agree that proper forest management is important and may decrease risk in parts of Nova Scotia, but I think it’s dangerous to focus on it in a scenario like the current one - an unprecedented drought.
Bad forest management (logging patterns, over-suppression of fires) creates regional problems, not wide-scale, global, burning of our forests. Unfortunately, even the best forest management practices of the past wouldn’t save the forests from what’s happening now due to climate change.
Why do I think it’s dangerous to focus on? Citing “bad forest management” is often used (especially by the right-wing) to distract from the real issue causing unprecedented levels of forest burning: human-caused climate change, led primarily by the burning of fossil fuels. I’d also posit that those same right-wing capitalists were (and are) the ones lobbying for more access to forests for clear-cutting, widespread use of herbicides, and screaming bloody murder when every single fire wasn’t immediately suppressed to protect their livelihood.
Our best method of forest management, controlled burns, as we’ve learned from the First Nations, is not enough, and isn’t effective if young, recovering forests reburn at the drop of a cigarette (https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/eap.3023). Prescribed burning worked when forests didn’t burn for a long time and became risky and dangerous, so the ancestors (and now our modern forest managers, growing since the 1950s) would force them to burn in as safe a manner as possible, preventing a future, local disaster. But if young, fresh forests burn uncontrollably, there’s not much prescribed burns can do for us. Prescribed burns may still work in targeted areas, but it isn’t feasible to scale to Canada’s vast, forest wilderness.
Better logging practices would definitely help reduce wildfire danger regionally, but on a whole-province (let alone whole-country) scale the impact would be partial at best. Areas where healthy forests have been clear-cut, and herbicides have been used to “shape” monoculture new growth, are definitely more at risk and will put the areas around them somewhat more at risk. However, probably over 60% of Nova Scotia is considered natural forest, and the current drought and dryness of the vegetation has led to high fire risk across the board. (It’s also important to note that NS has started moving towards better practices in recent years, with clearcutting reduced from a decade ago and more focused on at-risk forests and selective cutting - though they may not be moving fast enough. Probably due to lobbying by logging companies whose product is about to burn anyway…)
To reduce wildfire risk we’re going to have to start exploring drastic, interventionalist methods of forest management, and there’s no telling which of them will work and what the consequences will be. Tree thinning, deadwood removal, massive fire break development, etc. are on the docket for managing our forests in the future. These are expensive, difficult to scale, intrusive, unnatural, and could drastically affect ecosystems. I foresee at least some of these being called out in the future as bad forest management due to some other ecological catastrophe they’ve fomented.
(Or we could work harder to stop/reverse climate change, and/or accept our forest-less sub-tropical-desert future.)
Maybe “bad forest management” is part of the problem, but the level and scale of dry forests we’re experiencing now far outweighs its effects. So we should be very careful going down the path of using it to blame on our current issues.
I agree with your sentiment. That’s why I listed climate change before mentioning forestry practices.
We aren’t in an either/or scenario. Nova Scotia needs to do more to limit GHG emissions. On top of improving public transit, using more efficient heating/cooling solutions, reducing GHG intensity of power generation, etc; Nova Scotia needs to reform forestry practices.