Wildfires: What are the Drivers?

Last summer was a record-breaking wildfire season for Canada. As smoke blanketed major Canadian cities and even portions of the East Coast and Midwest of the United States, media coverage soared.  
This year, wildfire season has already started. Experts are warning of another series of catastrophic impacts. What is driving these unprecedented, longer wildfire seasons? Is there something missing in the public narrative? In this episode, we’re looking for answers.
This week, we set the stage for our wildfire inquiry by asking some of the pressing questions with a fire ecologist expert. We sit down with Jen Baron from the University of British Columbia for some insights. What are the main drivers? What is the role of forest management policies, and is there a disconnect between the two?

Make sure to check out the show notes on the podcast webpage for more links and helpful resources.

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Episode Transcript

Janet Sumner (00:00):
Welcome to the Clear Cut.
Hi, I'm Janet Sumner, ExecutiveDirector at Wildlands League.

Kaya Adleman (00:08):
And I'm Kaya Adelman, Carbon Manager at
Wildlands League.

Janet Sumner (00:14):
Wildlands League is a Canadian conservation
organization working onprotecting the natural world.

Kaya Adleman (00:21):
The Clear Cut is bringing to you the much needed
conversation on Canadian forestmanagement and how we can better
protect one of Canada's mostimportant ecosystems, as our
forests are reaching a tippingpoint.

Janet Sumner (00:40):
Yeah, so we're starting this episode knowing
that wildfire season has alreadystarted in Canada, which is
incredibly.
It's heartbreaking to see it'shappening in Western Canada, BC
and Alberta, and towns are beingevacuated, people's lives are
being upset and certainly thespecies that live there are

(01:01):
being impacted and, of course,on a climate level it's also
impacting.
So, just on every possible way,it is heart-wrenching to see
the forest fires that havealready begun in Canada and,
yeah, just very sad to see this.

Kaya Adleman (01:18):
Yeah, me too.
It is very heartbreakingAnytime I read a news article or
see images about those wildfireimpacts to communities and to
species and ecosystems.
It is very sobering as well and, just you know, all the more
reason to be having theseconversations and to finally be

(01:39):
doing this investigative diveinto the root of the issue.

Janet Sumner (01:44):
Investigative dive into the root of the issue.
Yeah, because we had resistedthat for a period of time and we
talked about this a little bitis that for Wildlands League, we
acknowledge that forest firesare becoming you know, we had
unprecedented year of forestfires last year.
They're becoming it's a longerseason, it's very intense, it's
all those kinds of things, andwe wanted to actually unpack it

(02:08):
and understand it a bit more.
The essential narrative thatwe've been hearing is we need
more forest firefighters, whichis okay.
Yeah, we probably do need moreof that.
And then the other one was thatit's being caused by climate
change, and, yes, we agreethat's making things drier and
hotter, et cetera.
But what is the role of how wemanage our forests, or forestry

(02:31):
very specifically, in all ofthis dynamic seems to have been
missing from the conversation.
And even internally inWildlands League, we decided
that we really needed to kind of, uh, put our heads together and
have a conversation about thisand, uh, what?
What's interesting and kaya canattest to this is it's it's the

(02:53):
first.
The first section of this isgoing to be with dave, and this
is the sanitized version of thatconversation, because anything
that we have internally whenwe're trying to decide something
or figure it out.
It is a robust argument, slashdiscussion and, and that was
exactly what we had here, and soyou're going to get the more

(03:14):
sanitized version and and kaya'sgoing to cut it down from the
almost hour that we spent on itand turn it into something that
has a sharper, tighter narrative, where you can hear from dave,
but it starts with what are thethings that we need to
understand, and that's whereDave kicked us off.

Kaya Adleman (03:31):
A real kicking of the tires, as we say on the
podcast sometimes.

Janet Sumner (03:39):
Okay, so today's episode we're going to talk
about wildfires.
What role does forestry have inwildfires?
What are wildfires?
Is there an increase inwildfires?
We have a lot of questions andwe don't necessarily have all
the answers, and we're lookingto start generating the

(04:00):
questions because we want to goout and find the answers.
So we've invited Dave Pierce,our senior forest conservation
manager, to the podcast andwe're going to be having a
discussion with him Right, Kai.

Kaya Adleman (04:12):
Yeah, we've probably talked about on the
podcast before about how therole of forest management in the
wildfire discussions has beenrelatively absent from the
mainstream media, especiallythis past summer when we saw
wildfires raging across Canadaat unprecedented levels.
So, yeah, I think it's a goodtime to start generating that

(04:37):
conversation and maybe exploringsome of those ideas, because it
does seem like an importantfactor when you look at some of
the existing research that's outthere.

Janet Sumner (04:50):
It's certainly worth asking the question.
As people were, you know,suffering from smoke-filled
skies and couldn't go outsidecertainly people with any health
issues, elderly, young,children, etc.
It was detrimental to one'shealth to go out and exercise.
These were all challengesduring the wildfire season, and

(05:11):
it was megafires across Canada,and this was, as you said,
unprecedented.
So I think we have morequestions than answers at this
point, but it is definitelysomething that we need to start
drilling down into.
But it is definitely somethingthat we need to start drilling
down into and, from myperspective, I saw the response

(05:36):
of many of my colleagues in theenvironmental movement, which
was, to you know, quite rightlypoint the finger at the
increased greenhouse gasemissions which were
accelerating climate change orcausing climate change, and that
climate change was leading toan increase in these megafires,

(05:57):
both the severity and thefrequency, and so that was
certainly in the media, it wascovered.
So that was certainly in themedia, it was covered.
The response of manypoliticians was we need to have
more firefighters, which I don'tdispute and certainly
protecting hearth and home andpeople's lives.
One of the challenges we did notsee, though, as you quite

(06:19):
rightly point out, was we didnot see well, what's the role of
other activities that we havegoing on in the forest?
What's the role of forestry howwe manage forest?
Maybe it's not even forestry,maybe it's just how we manage
forest.
And what does that look like?
Does it mean that we can?
Does it mean we can actuallymanage forest, or should we have
more intact or natural forest?

(06:42):
And these are some of the kindsof questions that we didn't see
covered in the media or theconversation and the reason that
we want to do the podcast.
Dave, maybe you can start toweigh in on some of this or
maybe some of the questions thatwere kind of occurring to you
and what your thought processwas.

Dave Pearce (07:01):
Yeah, I think I mean without getting.
We can delve into a couple moreexamples, but again we have
this um forest management on theone hand, the potential to
increase the number and severityof fires at different time
scales, and then the potentialforest management to actually
help.
But as I did this thoughtexperiment, it seemed to me that

(07:23):
a lot of the helping of forestmanagement was helping to
mitigate the impacts of forestmanagement.
So at the you know, you know,without having, uh, empirical
data at my fingertips, you kindof think well, maybe at the best
it's kind of neutral, right,it's, it's harming, but then

(07:43):
it's helping enough to maybereduce that harm when it comes
to the frequency and severity offire.
So maybe we're at a, in thebest case scenario we're kind of
at a stalemate because it'shelping, yeah, but we don't
actually know right.

Janet Sumner (07:58):
We just know that there are activities that help
and there are activities thathurt, and we haven't actually
come up with a strategy on whatthat looks like and what we've
been seeing or what.
And you know I'm not going tosay this is the definitive take
on it, but I have seen in mediareports that it means we need to

(08:18):
get in and harvest more, faster, faster, and I think there's a
lot of questions around that,especially if harvesting is
actually increasing ourgreenhouse gas emissions and so
it's like okay, so you've got anincrease in greenhouse gas
emissions.
Your actual forest managementpractices may be neutral if you

(08:39):
do them in the right way, and itall happens and it evens out,
but we don't know that but atthe end of the day, we're still
adding fuel to the fire, quiteliterally yep, yeah, and we
haven't even gotten into theconversation of um biomass.

Kaya Adleman (08:54):
And I mean that all those emissions get
transferred to the electricityum sector, I'd imagine.
But then there's also thetransport of biomass around the
world.
That's greenhouse gas emissionscontributing to climate change.
And then there's what is thetrade-off of keeping forests

(09:17):
standing, or what is thetrade-off of transitioning what
biomass is burning to arenewable energy source?

Janet Sumner (09:26):
yeah I.
I don't even know if theemissions get transferred to the
electricity sector, becausethey're deemed to be renewable
all right, the trees will growback at some point.
right, so it's it's almost agiven that you have a zero
emissions store.
But so, yeah, that's achallenge.
But you're right, kaya, it'slike well, and then the other

(09:47):
piece is if you leave the foreststanding, okay, so you
prevented emissions fromhappening.
But the other thing that youdid is you kept the forest
standing so that it could beabsorbing carbon, and there's
good science that says the olderforests actually absorb more
carbon than the younger forests.

Dave Pearce (10:04):
Yeah, that's my understanding that, that
generally, that the olderforests went out and and the you
know, the natural forests aremore resilient, right, when they
do burn, you might not get a asas severe a fire.
You have more charcoal left, asyou said, which is, you know,
pretty long-term carbon storage,longer than a forest product.

(10:26):
Um, yeah, a lot, a lot ofquestions, I think.
I think it was a good, goodexercise to go through and and
think um, think about um.
You know the pros and cons offorest management, but we
definitely need to dig into itmore and get some more people
that have some data on bothsides.

(10:47):
I think, to be fair, we wantdata on both sides, but just in
my little thought experiment, itdid seem like the potentially
decreasing activities weredecreasing problems that forest
management caused in the firstplace.

Janet Sumner (11:08):
So how does?
Because we do fire suppression.
So how does that play?
I mean, this is not actually afire, it's actually suppressing
fire.
How does that play when itcomes to forestry?
Or why do we do that when itcomes to forestry?

Dave Pearce (11:24):
What is?
fire suppression uh, firesuppression is, um putting out
fires, essentially trying totrying to manage the fires.
Trying to put them out, uh,trying to reduce their size,
frequency, intensity, and thatcan be to protect a nearby
community.
It can be because there'svaluable timber and the forestry

(11:48):
companies don't want to seethat burn.
You know, um, just the fuelbuilds up to a point where, when
inevitably, a fire does isproduced there, it is so hot,

(12:13):
there's so much fuel, um thatyou can't put it out and it just
it becomes, you know, abehemoth.
You know, and just um, all youcan do is step back, step back
and maybe try to fight it aroundthe edges.
Try to, you know, and they haveto evacuate communities because
they it's so big you can't putit out, and arguably,

(12:35):
suppressing fire for you know,up to a hundred years has
produced that fuel load um,increase that fuel on the
landscape so that thesecatastrophic fires are more
likely.

Janet Sumner (12:52):
I mean, one of the things about this podcast and a
couple of people have said thisto me is that they like it
because it allows them to seehow we think through problems,
and I think that this is.
We are at the beginning of thisand we can't make declarative
statements at this point.
We know there's a bunch ofareas that we want to go and
investigate, investigate, and wewe have seen um, uh, as I said,

(13:21):
the environmental commissionerhas come out on greenhouse gas
emissions and said that thissector of forestry actually has
um emissions that canada is notcurrently reporting or
accounting for we do know thatand we know that fire
suppression is going on.
We know that that's that can beused to protect timber values as
well as protect homes, etcetera.
And we know that the forest ischanged when it is harvested,

(13:45):
that that change is the verynature of it.
You know that's a fairlyintrusive activity the
industrial harvesting.
So those are some of the thingswe know, but we don't
necessarily know, understand allof the dynamics et cetera.
So what are the questions?
If you can direct us and saythese are some of the things I

(14:07):
want to know the answers to.

Dave Pearce (14:09):
Yeah, I mean, I think some of the questions were
implicit in our discussion, butsome of the specific questions
I have, like, overall, in aparticular forest management
regime and a particular forestregime, and if we had expert
opinion on both sides, doesforest management, uh,
exacerbate the, the severity andintensity of fires?

(14:33):
Uh, and I think we want to talkabout different time scales.
But in, in, you know, in theseverity and intensity of fires,
uh, and I think we want to talkabout different time scales,
but in, in, you know, in theshort and medium term, is what
we're most concerned about, uh,does it help, right, what's,
what's the, what's the balanceon, you know, in each particular
forest management regime.
And so you'd have to look atdifferent jurisdictions, right?
So for Ontario, at differentjurisdictions, right, so for

(14:58):
Ontario, like I'd want to know,you know, I'd want to have
experts on both sides weigh inand kind of say, you know, does
it help or does it hurt?
And then, in terms ofparticular activities, you know,
road building, are the risks,that drying out, that edge
effect, you know, or is itcompensated by the fact that, oh
, we can get heavy equipment inand we can fight the fires and
put them out.
You know, what does the evidenceshow?

(15:18):
And then I think you brought itup that the forest company says
you know, we just have toharvest more, right, we got to
cut these trees down before theyburn and so we can store them
in long-term wood products.
And on the face of it, you know, I think you know people buy
into that, into that, um.
But I'd like to unpack that alittle bit more and say well,

(15:38):
you know, even if it did work,we can't cut for us that fast.
And is the premise even true arewe storing?
Are we storing that carbon, oris it most of it going to waste
wood, right?
Or are we burning it?
Uh, in in, uh in biomass and sokind of like, really drilling
down on on that, that question.

(16:01):
And then, if we want to storemore carbon, is it possible to
manage our forest so they storemore carbon than a natural
forest, right?
So what's the difference inforest carbon storage between a
natural forest and a managedforest?
And then, is it possible totake a forest that has been
degraded already, in a degradedcondition, already managed, and

(16:24):
and then take that forest andhave it, uh, you know, either
make it more natural or have itstore carbon quicker in time
frames that are going to make adifference, right, which is
basically before 2050, right?

Janet Sumner (16:43):
Yeah, one of the big things for me is I think we
need more climate resilientforests and we need to plan to
make that happen.
I think there might be someagreement with the sector that
we need climate resilience.
I think the version that I'mthinking of is maybe a little
bit different than versions I'veheard, but I think we need more
climate resistant forests.
I like your ideas aboutthinking about carbon storage

(17:05):
and really looking at how muchis actually released by a fire.
I mean, even there's a lot ofunpacking to do and a lot of
understanding.
And then what is the role offorest management and the change
of the age, class and structureof the forest and what does
that do in terms of forest fires?
And and recognizing it and Iguess also recognizing that we

(17:26):
now have mega fires on thehorizon and I know that this
year has been another dry year,with drought maps coming out
that are suggesting it.
It could be another dangerousyear.
So hopefully not and hopefullypeople are as safe as can be.
But with climate change, we arenow in a megafire reality and
we have to start thinking aboutthat and forestry plays a role.

Dave Pearce (17:49):
Yeah, absolutely.
It's been kind of fun to getsome of these questions out on
the table and maybe in the shownotes I can type up, you know,
sort of explicit questions thatwe can sort of think about and
put out there for people toweigh in on.

Janet Sumner (18:12):
And now we're going to actually start to dive
into the investigation with JenBarron and Kaya.
Do you want to tee this one up?

Kaya Adleman (18:21):
Yeah, so Jen is a fire ecologist and you'll hear
more about her work when sheintroduces herself.
She's based in British Columbiaand she works on wildfires,
consumes knowledge aboutwildfires and is understanding
wildfires every single day.
So we thought that she would bea great person to kick off the

(18:44):
conversation that we're going tohave on the subject, and I
don't want to give too much away, but it's really insightful and
it'll be great to hear aboutall of the underlying causes of
wildfires and really expandingthe conversation from the more
climate-focused narrative thatwe were seeing last summer.

Janet Sumner (19:05):
Yeah, and I think if you're listening to your
podcast at a higher speed whichI often do, especially with our
podcast I have to listen to itthree or four times before we
put it out to the public.

Kaya Adleman (19:15):
Janet's busy guys.

Janet Sumner (19:21):
Yeah, and I often have it at well also, we know
what we said.
We've heard it before, right,but when you're listening at 1.2
, or I tried to re-listen to theJen interview today at 1.5, she
talks fast and the other thingis some of the topics that she's
unpacking are very dense.
So if you're listening to thispodcast at like 1.5 or 1.8, you

(19:42):
better slow it down becauseyou're going to be paying
attention to absorb all of this,because it is a very dense
conversation and Jen walks usthrough a very compelling
narrative, but it's like abarrage of concepts and ideas
that really have a lot of meatin the bones or broccoli in the
pan or something like that.
It's a lot of information, soenjoy, it's going to be a good

(20:06):
conversation.

Kaya Adleman (20:07):
Yes, I agree.

Janet Sumner (20:13):
So, kaya, I'm really looking forward to this
conversation with Jen Barron,who's agreed to join us today,
and we're going to be talkingabout wildfires, and maybe we'll
start by asking Jen to give usa little bit about who she is,
what her role is and where sheworks.
And why do you do this work?
Anyway, welcome Jen.

Jen Baron (20:33):
Thanks, thanks for having me.
Yeah, so my name is Jen Barron.
I'm currently a PhD candidateat the University of British
Columbia and the Faculty ofForestry, where I specialize in
wildfires and wildfiremanagement.
So I'm also an instructor, alecturer, in the Masters of
Geomatics and EnvironmentalManagement Program at the
University of British Columbia,and I'm a practitioner.
So I work as a consultant onprescribed fires, as a fire

(20:56):
behavior analyst and fireeffects monitor, so I wear a lot
of different hats.
My background and how I came tofire was really from a forest
ecology standpoint.
So prior to being at UBC, I wasin Southern Ontario and I was
working on invasive species andkind of disturbance patterns,
climate change impacts, and thatwas right around the time of
the 2017-2018 fire season in BC.

(21:18):
And so when I was looking forgrad school, the timing with
that fire season really made itseem like an urgent and
important environmentalmanagement issue and also an
issue that I could have sometype of meaningful impact on in
terms of my research and myrecommendations for management.
So that's the context withinwhich I came to BC, right around
those fire seasons, and sincethen we've experienced another

(21:39):
two record-breaking fire seasonsin 2021 and 2023 in British
Columbia, and 2023, inparticular, was record-breaking
across Canada.
In addition, I've certainlyalways been fascinated by fire,
but as a researcher, I wasreally drawn to it because of
the opportunity to engage acrossa lot of different sectors.

(22:01):
So fire is verymultidisciplinary.
It means we can draw from a lotof areas of expertise, like I'm
a fire ecologist, but I havecolleagues who are wildlife
biologists or foresters orpeople who work in human health,
and so there's a lot ofdifferent angles to come at the
fire problem from which I'mreally interested in.
In addition, I think thatthere's a real opportunity to

(22:22):
impact change on the ground.
So you know, although I havedone past research on climate
change and I'm still involved inthat research to some extent,
from fire we can impact it bothfrom the climate level, but also
from on the ground, from afuels level, and a lot of the
big problems in fire are relatedto human management, changes
that have been made on theground, and so there's a real

(22:44):
opportunity to work withcommunities and particularly
with kind of local and rural andFirst Nations communities
around some of the solutions tofire.

Janet Sumner (22:53):
So that's a rich vein to explore.
I'm actually going to ask youto go back a little bit and just
explain for our audience,because some people may know and
may not know what geomatics is.

Jen Baron (23:04):
When you say that yeah, so geomatics is
essentially spatial data science, so it's uh, esri describes it
as the science of where umbasically using spatial data to
understand kind of patterns andalso process, and I teach
landscape ecology so I'mparticularly interested in how
spatial pattern impactsecosystems and how information

(23:28):
about ecosystems can be betterinformed through spatial data.

Janet Sumner (23:33):
I just got to geek out just for a second.
So the Canada spatial inventory, I think, is at a 30 meter
resolution.
What resolution are you able towork with?
Or what data sets do you havein a BC context?
Are they better than that orwhat are you looking at?

Jen Baron (23:53):
Yeah, so one of the data sets I've worked with a lot
that's actually quite an olddata set is air photos, which
we'll probably talk about alittle bit more later in the
podcast.
But air photos have been aroundsince the Second World War, so
they're actually one of theoldest remote sensing methods.
But they're also one of thehighest resolution, so they can
be a meter or less than a meterin spatial resolution.

(24:14):
But the cost of that is that alot of modern remote sensing
methods we get a lot of bandswith, and so there's a lot more
information associated withthose images.
With air photos we often haveonly three bands red, green and
blue, or we might only have oneif it's a black and white image,
so a historical image, but theyare also very high resolution
images and also what peoplewould see if you went on Google

(24:34):
Earth or Google Maps A lot oftheir photos are actually from
air photos.

Janet Sumner (24:38):
That's fascinating .

Jen Baron (24:39):
I didn't know that.

Janet Sumner (24:40):
Yeah, that's fantastic.
We did a project at WildlandsLeague called Logging Scars and
we were able to get 40centimeter resolution and that
was partially from Landsatimagery and also from drone
footage and essentially walkingthe forestry blocks and looking

(25:02):
at things and gettingphotographs.
So thanks very much for thatexplanation.

Kaya Adleman (25:06):
Hey, are you liking the clear cut as much as
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Your donation helps us bringmore of these important stories
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You can actually support ourwork by going to our website,
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Slash the clear cut, or you canclick the link in the episode

(25:27):
description below.
Your support means the world tous.
Yeah, so you were talking aboutthe kind of the different
approaches to fire management,either on the climate space or
on the ground in the managementforestry space.
I was wondering if you couldelaborate more on that side and

(25:50):
maybe explain, like, what arefuel loads for our audience?

Jen Baron (25:57):
like what are fuel loads?
For our audience, things likethat, yeah.
So in fire, for some reason, wereally love triangles, we
really love explaining things asbeing driven by triangles, and
so when we think about firebehavior, we often think about
it in terms of being driven byeither the climate, the fuels or
the topography, and so all ofthese things kind of come
together to shape how fires looklike, not just on a single fire

(26:18):
event, but also over the courseof fire seasons.
When we talk about the way thatfires are changing, there's
only one of those things thathasn't really changed, and
that's the topography.
Of course, we have changed thelay of the land somewhat over
the past hundred years, but wethink of it as being relatively
static.
But we are making very largechanges to both the fuels and
the climate, and so a lot ofwhat I study and a lot of what

(26:41):
the conversation in BritishColumbia is around is the
relative influence of thosedifferent factors the changing
climate and the changing fuelson the landscape, on driving
changes that we see in fire, andalso how our different
management scenarios mightimpact different aspects of that
relationship.
So, from a climate perspective,of course the climate is

(27:02):
getting warmer and, inparticular, it's getting drier
and warmer at the same time, andso fire is very responsive to
moisture, and so to offset theincrease in temperature, we
would need to see a significantincrease in precipitation in
order for fires to stay the same.
And we're not seeing thosechanges.
And so not just because thetemperature is getting warmer

(27:25):
and drier on average, butbecause we're having drought
over longer periods of time.
This is extending the length ofthe fire season and extending
the period of time over which wemight experience extreme fire
weather, which results often inextreme fire behavior.
That's only one piece of thepuzzle, though.
In order for things to burn inan extreme way, there often

(27:46):
needs to be enough fuel there todrive extreme fire behavior,
and we've also been changing thefuel side of that triangle.
So over the past 100 years,we've been so successful at
putting out fires that, in theabsence of that fire, a lot of
fuel has accumulated.
So in the past, more frequent,lower severity fires would have
removed a lot of that ingrowth,those seedlings that are
regenerating the branches in theunderstory.

(28:06):
In the absence of those fires,because we've put all of the
fires out so successfully forthe past hundred years, there's
a lot of fuel that's accumulatedand that's layered on top of a
lot of other land use changesrelated to forest management.
So, starting back in the early20th century, with widespread
harvesting practices, highgrading, and then the legacies
of those changes, clear cuts andreplanting of forest ecosystems

(28:32):
, and also the way that we treatresidue in the forest industry,
so the slash that's left behindafter harvesting has a big
influence on fire behavior.
It can increase fire behaviorand cut blocks, and so those
combinations of changes, as wellas our expansion to the
wildland-urban interface andtrends with agriculture and
livestock grazing, have reallychanged the fuels matrix as well

(28:54):
, and so not only are theseforests burning under hotter and
drier conditions than in thepast, but there's a lot more
fuel to consume than there wasin the past as well, and that
combination of factors is reallyresponsible for driving the
changes that we've seen inrecent years.

Janet Sumner (29:10):
That is a fantastic explanation and really
brings I love the triangles.
I had not heard that before andreally brings I love the
triangles.
I had not heard that before.
I noticed that most policy workis focused on, or many
environmental groups have beentalking about, the need to
reduce climate change, butthat's not going to happen
anytime soon.
I mean we can obviously try toget we need to get our emissions

(29:30):
under control, but the variablethat seems the most and maybe
that's not even an immediate butyou speak about sort of the
history of forest management andyou talk about it as high
grading.
You talk about it as stoppingfires.
That's very commonly calledfire suppression, used right

(29:57):
across Canada where we have beenartificially suppressing fires
smaller fires that would haveoccurred and they naturally
would have gone into the forestand removed some of that, what
potentially becomes fuel.
And then we've got how wemanage slash, et cetera, that
urban interface.
But I also wonder if treespecies has actually started to
contribute to that because ofwhat we're replanting or the.
I mean, we're not necessarilyreplanting forests, we're

(30:18):
replanting trees and we don'tnecessarily get a full, fully
functional ecosystem back.

Jen Baron (30:25):
Absolutely yeah.
So I think, unfortunately, oneof the kind of large
misconceptions in the public iskind of the motivation behind
forest replanting afterharvesting.
I think in the public theperception is that the reason we
do widespread planting andpeople especially associated
with British Columbia andAlberta is to restore and

(30:46):
regenerate forests.
But really what that replantingis to do is to create future
forests to harvest.
It revolves around the forestindustry and so, as a
consequence of that, thedecisions that we've made around
this kind of sustainable yieldharvest are related to the trees
we might want to harvest in thefuture, as opposed to what was
there in the first place orwhat's most likely to survive a
fire, for example.

(31:07):
And so a lot of thesehistorically fire adapted
ecosystems either naturallyregenerated with denser species
that shifted the speciescomposition because fire was
removed, so more fire intolerantspecies moved in, or we've
replanted them with things likelodgepole pine, which has value
on international markets, and sothese really dense pine

(31:27):
plantations, in particular denseplantations of conifers, are
very different from what thecompositions of some of these
landscapes were in the past, andthat's true across different
ecosystem types.
In addition, we have activelyexcluded deciduous species from
our landscape, so through theuse of herbicides and brushing
and spraying we've removeddeciduous species like aspen

(31:49):
that are relatively fireintolerant, so as to say they're
often described as fuel breaksor asbestos forests.
And so when aspen is green, sowhen its leaves are out in the
summer, it's known to resistfire relatively well.
When it doesn't have its leaveson, then it can actually

(32:10):
increase fire spread.
So there's some complexity inthe relationship between aspen
and fire.
But in general, the removal ofhardwoods from our forests, as
well as the kind ofmonoculturification of forestry,
has also driven changes in thefuels we see on our landscapes.

Janet Sumner (32:27):
So when aspen are green, which is mostly in the
summer, when we're expectingprobably the highest incidence
of and severity of fires, that'swhen they could be functioning
as a bit of a fire break.

Jen Baron (32:41):
Correct.
Yes, and that also explains alittle bit why we see so much
fire activity in the borealforest in the early spring,
because that's prior to whenaspen have their leaves on.
We also experienced thisphenomenon called spring dip,
where the foliar moisture islower in the foliage of the
conifers and so they're moreprone to burning, and

(33:03):
particularly last year like in2023, when we have a warm and
dry spring combined with thesekind of fuel moisture conditions
, then we can see really largefires start in the boreal that
burn throughout the summer.

Janet Sumner (33:22):
Okay, wow, kaya, do you want to take a?
Shot at the question Because Ican see you pardon the pun
burning with anticipation.

Kaya Adleman (33:31):
I guess I'm just curious.
We've talked a little bitbefore on the podcast with some
BC-based groups about how fireis kind of a natural part of the
BC forest ecosystems.

Jen Baron (33:47):
Could you maybe elaborate a little bit more on
that?
Yeah, so absolutely, I meanacross Canada.
Fire is a natural part ofalmost all ecosystems and BC has
a lot of diverse, differenttypes of ecosystems in it.
So that largely stems from thediverse topography within BC.
That topography and thecombinations of climate that it

(34:10):
supports, and also kind of thedistinct separation of different
populations of species, reallybegets diversity, and that's
something that we see and weoften compare, for example, in
tropical ecosystems.
So because we have so manydifferent forest types in BC,
then we also have a lot ofdifferent adaptations to fire

(34:36):
and so kind of on opposite endsof that spectrum might be really
dry, low elevation forests andgrasslands and open forests,
like in the Okanagan or in theRocky Mountain Trench, which is
where I work.
These forests are essentiallydeserts and so historically they
burned very frequently, bothcombination of lightning
ignitions and intentionalignitions from indigenous people
through fire stewardshippractices, and they burned
frequently at low severity, andso we would consider these to be

(34:57):
a fuels limited system.
So essentially it's always hotand dry enough for them to burn,
but because there's such shortintervals between fire, there's
not a lot of fuel to burn when afire is set, and so these are
the systems that arecharacterized by species like
ponderosa, pine, interiorDouglas fir, sometimes Western
larch and bunch grasses, kind ofopen grasslands and woodlands,

(35:18):
and so these historically burnvery often.
The other side of that spectrumis something like a boreal
forest or a coastal forest, andso these systems are generally
considered to be more climatelimited, and so there's always a
lot of biomass in theseecosystems, but we rarely get
the synchronous hot, dryconditions that allow all that
biomass to burn, and so in thepast these systems would have

(35:41):
burned more infrequently but atvery high severity when they did
burn, because there was so muchfuel on the site and in between
that kind of gradient ofburning, frequently at low
severity and infrequently athigh severity, there's a lot of
our kind of montane andsub-boreal forests, and that's
where a lot of our forestharvesting happens in these kind
of these systems that areadapted to these mixed severity

(36:01):
fire regimes, so a combinationof kind of those lower severity
fires, more moderate severityfires and higher severity fires.

Janet Sumner (36:10):
So You're saying that the where are the fires
occurring right now in BC?
Not right this second, butpredominantly over the last.
What is it six years thatyou've been studying there?
Where are these, the big firesthat are getting reported
everywhere and are, you know,blowing debris and smoke across

(36:33):
the continent?
Where's that?
Where are those fires occurring?

Jen Baron (36:39):
across the continent.
Where are those fires occurring?
Yeah, so I would say the firesthat become high profile kind of
fall into two categories.
The biggest fires are certainlyin the northern portion of the
province and the boreal forests,and that's for a couple of
reasons.
One is because boreal forestsare adapted to burn at high
severity.
We are much more likely to findthese kind of large fire events
that are very climate driven,and so they're inherently often

(37:01):
much larger.
There's fewer things for themto run into in the north, like
fewer communities, fewer fuelbreaks, and in addition the way
we suppress fires in the borealin the north is also different.
So we have a much more modifiedresponse approach to fire in
the north than we have for along time, and that's largely
because of resources but also arecognition of the importance of

(37:23):
fire to serve a natural role,and so we're much less likely to
immediately suppress a fire.
When it starts in a borealforest, that's not immediately
threatening a community or otherhealth and safety values.
Of course it does impact theforest industry and sometimes
that impacts our wildfiremanagement planning, but that's
very different decision-makingthan when, for example, we get a

(37:44):
wildfire that starts justoutside Kelowna, and so that's
the other type of fires thatbecome very high profile.
So those aren't necessarily thelargest fires per se, but
they're often the most impactful, both in terms of the immediate
impact on people living in thearea but also kind of the
widespread impact where we havea lot of communities in interior
British Columbia that areimpacted by fire evacuations

(38:06):
every year and we get thesechallenges where, because we
have fire complexes burning allsummer, we're often evacuating
one community to another, wherethat community is also then
impacted by fires and evacuated,and so those fires, while
they're not necessarily thelargest, are often the least
characteristic of theirhistorical disturbance regime,
because they're in the dryforests and they also often

(38:28):
impact the largest number ofpeople, although perhaps the
largest impact last summer interms of the number of people
affected was the smoke that camefrom the fires largely from the
boreal, and so that is also thegeographic limits, or lack
thereof, of those large fires issomething I think we're
beginning to also grapple withkind of as a society.

Kaya Adleman (38:52):
Maybe in a BC context can you speak to maybe
the, I guess, the role of theforest industry in how they deal
with the fires, what's theframework, et cetera.

Jen Baron (39:05):
Yeah, so across BC, bc is mostly crown land, so
federal land, which is managedby the province, and BC largely
has a a forest management or aforest industry that's based on
a tenure system, um, and so theprovince relegates a lot of the

(39:27):
responsibility for managingthose lands to the forest
licensees that have tenure toharvest on them, and so, as a
consequence, what happens isthat BC wildfire is the one who
manages for fires that occur onthose lands.
But anything else related tofuels management, for example,
or replanting after harvesting,restoration those types of

(39:47):
things often fall on theresponsibility of the forest
licensees.
Although the provincialgovernment does have some
programs related to wildfirerisk reduction on crown land,
most of the management by areathat happens across BC is done
by the forest industry in ourmanaged forest.
So across the timber harvestedland base.
So maybe.

Janet Sumner (40:09):
so I'm just going to interrupt, so can I maybe
sort of parse that out.
So when you say that thewildfire management is done by
the government, so if there is awildfire they get out and
they'll assess whether or notthey need to get in there and
intervene because it might be athreat to communities, to humans

(40:30):
, or it may be a threat to thevolume of timber or things like
that, or they want to prevent itfrom a wild spread, that kind
of thing.
But in terms of managing theprecursors to a fire, things
like fuel load et cetera, that'sleft to the forest management
companies, and so it's kind ofseparated out that way.

(40:53):
That's what you're saying,right, Just to be clear.

Jen Baron (40:56):
Yeah, that's correct, and so there's very few cases
where, if a fire started in BC,bc wildfire wouldn't be the ones
responding.
Those cases are usually ParksCanada has their own fire
response staff, and then for therailroads, they're responsible
for a small strip of land oneither side of the railroad, but
essentially BC wildfire isusually the one responding on
public land, often on reserveand on private land.

(41:18):
So they are only responsible.
Their mandate is to put outfires, and so everything else
related to wildfire managementis relegated to the province,
which is then passed on to theforest licensees, because
they're the ones conductingactivities on those lands.
And so, yes, that's correct.
Most of the fuels managementthat's done in the province, or

(41:38):
changes that would impact fuelsand wildfire risk, is happening
in the forest industry.

Janet Sumner (41:45):
Is the management of the fuels or the source of
fuels left to the individualcompanies, or is there a BC
strategy for that, or has therebeen one created and then that
gets downloaded or delegateddown to the forestry companies?

Jen Baron (42:02):
Yeah, so the forest companies are only required to
manage for what's currently inprovincial policy and so they're
largely managing for what'scalled free to grow, essentially
growing standards to ensure theforest will come back as a
forest.
And that kind of conduct ofpractice as well is managed by
the Forest Practices Board.

(42:22):
So registered professionalforesters are making decisions
around forest sustainability.
At present that professionaldesignation and that body does
not have mandates orrestrictions or professional
competencies around wildfire,and so that is a bit of a gap in
the system in terms of thepeople that are making the
forest management decisions andalso designing a lot of the fuel
treatments that are happeningwhich are often involved.

(42:43):
You know silviculturalmanagement as well, forest
thinning are not necessarilyexperts in wildfire management
and so while there's overlapbetween forestry and wildfire,
they are distinct kind ofspecialties or areas of
expertise.
They are distinct kind ofspecialties or areas of
expertise.
In the past we used to do abetter job in the province at
managing wildfire risk throughbroadcast burning.

(43:04):
So in the 70s and 80s there wasa lot more broadcast burning
happening within the Ministry ofForests back when BC Wildfire
employees were still working forthe ministry year round and
more kind of wildlife and foresthealth type positions.
Those two split in the 90s.
It was called the Great Divorce.
Prior to that point there was alot of broadcast burning,

(43:25):
largely for silviculturalobjectives, so to stimulate
regeneration for the next cohortand also for wildlife habitat
objectives, and there weren'tvery many regulations around it.
I mean, I wouldn't recommendre-implementing that practice
the way it was done in the 70sand 80s.
But what happened in the 90swith the Great Divorce and also
changes to fear around liabilityand professional standards, is

(43:47):
that we basically stopped doingthat and we started just piling
slash and burning it at landingsand the consequence of that is
that there is a lot of fuel leftover on past cut blocks that
often can amplify wildfires.

Janet Sumner (44:01):
And can you explain what broadcast burning
is just for the listeners andmaybe for Kaya and I as well?

Jen Baron (44:07):
Yeah, so broadcast burning would essentially be
like a prescribed burn.
That's done in the forestindustry, and so a prescribed
burn is essentially any planned,intentionally set fire for
specific objectives.
And so a prescribed burn isessentially any planned,
intentionally set fire forspecific objectives.
And so a broadcast burn is onewe associate with the forest
industry usually, so burning theresidue that's left over after
harvesting usually.
But the difference betweensomething like slash pile

(44:30):
burning and broadcast burning isthat when you're burning slash
piles, you're only burning apile of stuff that you've piled
together and you're not burningthe whole site.
Broadcast burning you burnacross the whole site, and so
that would be the difference.

Janet Sumner (44:42):
So just to maybe give everybody listening an idea
of what that might mean is weuse prescribed burns in many of
the parks in Ontario and I'massuming they do in British
Columbia as well, and one veryfamously is High Park in Toronto
where they do prescribed burnsand that's for wildlife and to

(45:03):
bring back certain tree specieset cetera.
And those prescribed burns, youknow they're very carefully
done.
They're also done in AlgonquinPark and you basically set out
an area and you decide this isthe area specifically that we're
going to burn and we're notgoing to allow the fire to go
any further than this.
And it is it's kind of usingits natural system or its
natural way of regeneration andrebuilding to to work for, in

(45:29):
favor of what we want to see.
And you're saying that theyused to do that on a broadcast
level in British Columbia andnow they've they've ceased that.

Kaya Adleman (45:37):
They used to do that on a broadcast level in
British Columbia and now they'veceased that From an ecology
standpoint.

Jen Baron (45:44):
How does that generate or help with
regeneration?
Yeah, so it depends a littlebit on the specific ecosystem
and the condition prior to theburn, but in general, prescribed
burns can help stimulateregeneration of native plants,
germination of plants in theseed bank, specifically those
that are fire adapted.
It also introduces a nutrientflux to the soil and so that can
give a growth release,especially if you've just done

(46:06):
forest thinning, for example,and then you're doing a burn.
So that's often why it's usedsilviculturally.
It can also help with thingslike kind of broader
biogeochemical cycles andhydrological systems.
So there are a bunch ofecological benefits to doing so.
And one of perhaps thechallenges in recognizing this

(46:28):
and the loss of burning inBritish Columbia is that,
particularly in the 90s andearly 2000s, there was a lot of
discussion towards what wastermed as kind of sustainable
forestry or sustainable yieldforestry and increasing
recognition of the importance ofthe ecology of some of these
systems and forest management.
But that wasn't alwaysnecessarily implemented in a way

(46:49):
that actually benefited theecology of these systems, and so
a good example of that is thisconcept called emulation of
natural disturbance regimes, andwhat that concept essentially
says is that by managing to tryto recreate the impacts of the
natural disturbance of theseforests.
We can do forest managementlike harvesting that's more
sustainable.
The way that that's been usedin British Columbia is that most

(47:12):
forests, other than really drylow elevation forests, were
assumed to be high severitystand replacing disturbance
regimes.
And how do you emulate a highseverity disturbance regime?
Clear cut harvesting.
And so we've used thisframework to essentially justify
clear cut harvesting over largeportions of the province, which
vastly oversimplifies theseforest natural disturbance

(47:33):
regimes, these forest naturaldisturbance regimes, and also to
say that, although you aresimilarly killing all of the
trees in a clear-cut harvestversus in a high-severity fire,
the ecological impacts afterthat fire are very different.
So the changes in the soilnutrients, for example, or the
seed bank, all of those changesare not emulated by harvesting
alone.

Janet Sumner (47:57):
Yeah, we have that same problem in Ontario, which
you're probably familiar with,and what happens across Canada
is often started in one regionand then moves across.
And this fire emulation pieceis very interesting to me, and
it is also interesting in thesense that I love what you're
just saying about it doesn'treplicate or it doesn't emulate

(48:17):
fire.
That happens naturally.
Clear-cutting is not the sameas fire, and I've often said
that it's not the same as fire,because fire takes out, largely
speaking, takes out the genetic,the weaker genetics in a system
, whereas clear-cutting istaking out all the genetic
winners.
It's getting the best of thebest and the other thing that it

(48:40):
does, it leaves thisinfrastructure of roads and
landings behind that you don'tget from a wildfire.
Are there any other things thatyou'd like to say that are
maybe the differences betweenthose two systems?
And it is absolutely being usedto justify large-scale
clear-cut logging.

Jen Baron (48:58):
Yeah.
So I would say, in general, forfire-adapted species there is
nothing that can replace therole of fire.
And so you know that isn't tosay that we can inform our
harvesting based on conceptsfrom natural disturbance.
I understand, you know thatconcept and where it came from,
and I think it can beimplemented in an appropriate
way.
So if we're going to doharvesting and if we've

(49:21):
determined you know the extentto which we can harvest without
continually depleting harvest,you know forest resources and
you know declining the annualallowable cut, then we should
try to design those harvests inways that, ecologically, are
suited to those ecosystems.
Absolutely, that concept makessense, but that doesn't
necessarily mean we can use itto justify the amount of

(49:41):
harvesting we wanted to do inthe first place.
And so, particularly one of theother discrepancies between
those types of systems.
And this isn't always to saythat broadcast burning is
ecologically great or thatthings like salvage harvesting
are ecologically great harvestedsystems, because of how much

(50:04):
disturbance is in them, oftenintroduce invasive species,
invasive plants into the seedbank and that can really screw
up the fire cycle in a lot ofthese systems.
So, particularly when invasivegrasses become introduced,
things like cheatgrass, and theyget a hold on these systems,
then cheatgrass is also veryadapted to fire and it
competitively excludes nativespecies, and so that additional
layer of invasive species insome of these systems and the

(50:25):
fact that we're not reallymanaging for the long-term
ecology of the systems butinstead the long-term
sustainability of the forestindustry, means that we can
really interrupt the naturaldisturbance cycle and ultimately
kind of the composition ofthese landscapes as a result.

Janet Sumner (50:42):
I mean, you said something a little bit earlier.
You used the term sustainableforestry and then you said
sustained yield, and I thinkthat that's actually really the
nut of the problem is that we'vereally engaged in forest
management that is meant tosustain the yield for forestry,

(51:02):
not necessarily to sustain ourforests.

Jen Baron (51:05):
Yeah, and I mean there's certainly challenges in
there.
I mean I'm not a forester andI'm not a bioeconomist.
I understand that.
You know BC is, and continuesto be, very reliant on its
forest industry and willprobably always have a forest
industry in this province.
But many of the conversationsaround forestry still revolve
around how we're going tosustain forestry in British

(51:27):
Columbia and this kind ofconflation of environmentally
sustainable with sustainableyield, which are not the same
thing.
And I think, particularly inthe context of fire risk,
there's actually a huge need forthe forest industry to expand
into different sectors to helpus manage some of this biomass
that's on these sites, that'snot merchantable, that needs to

(51:49):
be removed before it can beburned safely, and so
retrofitting some of our closedmills and our machinery to deal
with smaller stem trees andthinking about kind of smaller
scale wood products productsthat could go into the in the
bioeconomy or in biofuels, forexample.
But I see that more as as kindof fundamentally transforming
and adapting the forest industryrather than sustaining it in

(52:11):
its current but shrinking formform, all right.

Janet Sumner (52:24):
So the triangle, the topography, and that stays
relatively stable because itinfluences your ecosystem, et
cetera.
Then you have the climate, andthen the other piece is the
forest management.
That's essentially just to boilthis down and summarize it.
Management, that's essentiallyjust to boil this down and
summarize it, and we've had ahundred years or so of fire
suppression, which has built upthe fuel load.

(52:45):
So then the other thing thatactually wasn't covered in Jen's
conversation, but I want tohearken back to something that
we talked with Peter Wood Ithink we also talked with Dave
and Michelle Connolly and manyothers which is this idea that
forestry is run on a model ofsustaining the yield to the mill

(53:08):
, and what that means is thatyou are always expanding the
forestry into new intact areas.
And the reason I bring this upis because, if we know that
forestry and how we manage theforest is actually one of the
ingredients of those three,that's potentially increasing

(53:31):
the risk and severity of forestfires or providing more of a
fuel load.
If we take forestry and weexpand it into new intact areas,
are we going to be repeatingthe same mistakes.
And I'm not suggesting thatforestry or how we manage
forests.
We were cognizant of this, youknow, 40, 50, 60, 100 years ago

(53:52):
or even 20 years ago.
But now that we know that thisis one of the ways in which we
can be potentially building upthe fuel load by suppressing the
fire and then going in andleaving debris, should we not
adjust our thinking and stopexpanding into new intact areas
with a forestry regime that weknow is certainly part of the

(54:13):
equation of possible problems interms of wildfires Not that
it's necessarily the only thing,but it's certainly one of the
things that we could immediatelystart to address.

Kaya Adleman (54:26):
Yeah, especially because that's as Michelle has
said on our podcast.
That's one of the things thatwe as humans do have control
over and, if we're taking thetriangle analogy into
consideration, again, we don'treally have control over the
topography of the land, but wedo have some influence on the
climate and we have likely evenmore influence in the way that

(54:49):
we're managing our forests.
So it definitely should besomething that we want to
address, especially since wesaid before in the beginning we
are teed up again for anotherrecord-breaking wildfire season.

Janet Sumner (55:05):
And it's the one that can have the most immediate
impact, because, you know,addressing climate change we
obviously need to do, butthere's always a delay factor,
like in reducing your emissions.
It's going to take a while forthat to impact on the climate
system, whereas, um, you know,not expanding into new intact
areas, you can.
You can, uh, start to changethat, and even in terms of the I

(55:27):
think dave referenced it inanother conversation, or or
maybe it came up with jenna butbut this idea that if you cut
into an intact forest, you'veactually created the edge effect
, or you've dried out that edgeof the forest, which also leads
to more dryness inside theinterior of that forest, so at

(55:47):
least we could be doing that.
And then it suggests to me thatwe need to be thinking about
the debris that we have built upin that forest.
What do we do with it?
Do we leave it as organicmaterial?
There needs to be a lot ofinvestigation into the different
ways, and the simplicity of theargument that I've heard to
date has been certainly putforward by governments and by

(56:10):
industry that we need to logfaster and more, and I'm not
sure that that's the answer.
Maybe it's log smarter, managethe forest smarter and think
about fire and not expand intonew intact areas.
Those are the kinds of thingsthat I would have as questions
for any strategy going forwardand start to want to build out

(56:33):
from there in my understanding.
So that's kind of where I landon the conversation.
We'd love to hear from you, ifyou're listening to the podcast
and you want to send ussomething on the speak pipe.
What are you thinking aboutforest fires, what is still
bugging you or that you wantanswers to or that you need to
know about?
You can send us a voicemailusing the speak pipe on our, on

(56:57):
our web page.
You could send us an email.
Um could just let us know whatyou're thinking and we'd be
happy to go and investigateareas where where we might find
some answers, because this is agreat deal of urgency to the
people who live in these areas,but also the urgency is there
for us at wildlands and I'm suremany, many canad, canadians and
Americans alike.

Kaya Adleman (57:19):
Yeah, and I just want to add, we have been
getting some responses overemail, so love hearing your
guys' feedback and comments onthe podcast.
So, yeah, if you have questionsthat you want answered,
especially on wildfires, yeah,please don't hesitate to reach
out.

Janet Sumner (57:37):
Yeah, all right, thanks.
Thanks to Jan, and thanks forall your questions on this.
Appreciate it.

Kaya Adleman (57:43):
Yes, thank you.

Janet Sumner (57:46):
If you like listening to the Clear Cut and
want to keep the content coming,support the show.
It would mean a lot to Kai andI.
The link to do so will be inthe episode description below.

Kaya Adleman (57:57):
You can also become a supporter by going to
our website atwwwwildlandsleagueorg.
Slash the clear cut and alsomake sure to leave us a review
on your favorite podcaststreaming platform.
It would really help thepodcast.