[edawg88]

In addition to climate change effects, do you think that preventing wildfires for decades contributes at all? My understanding is that managed burns can be useful at preventing the worst fire fires.

The fact that some trees only germinate in the presence of wildfires points to wildfires being a very natural and pre-human thing. And recent wildfire management practices are likely a strong factor in recent wildfires.

[foxyv]

The answer is: It's complicated

https://www.wilderness.org/articles/article/5-big-myths-abou...

Ecologically, wildfires are necessary for some biomes. However, not all of them. Many are needlessly destructive due to climate change and over logging of forests.

[red-iron-pine]

managed burns have their place in ecosystems where they're common.

most of these fires in Canada are because it needs to be -40C for about 2 weeks to kill off the pine beetle . if the beetle doesn't die then it, as the name suggests, infests pine trees and kills them.

after a couple seasons you have massive, absolutely immense swaths of dead pine trees, full of flammable pine tar and sap. eventually they burn, and the warm temps + beetles mean they don't come back. ecological change, biome collapse.

[BigGreenJorts]

Mountain pine beetles are more of a BC issue. They don't really exist in Ontario. There are native beetles that target eastern white and red pine, but not with such massive pine die offs.

[gwerbin]

I don't think that's as relevant for these huge regions of remote forest in Canada as it is for the lower 48 of the USA where you have a lot of population density and ranching and farming in the dry areas that historically burned on a regular basis. Maybe someone in rural Ontario knows the full story.

[BigGreenJorts]

Yeah, the boreal forests super rural/unpopulated bc they're mostly up north and on the shield where it's hard to build. That's said, there is quite a bit of logging lands where the age, arrangement and species makeup think we have fires more often than they're supposed to happen.

That's something to note : Jack pine which is fire adapted doesn't mature for a pretty long time. The boreal forest is meant to have massive powerful forest fires that clear stands completely but they're supposed to happen on a timeline of like 80+ years.

I'm not as plugged in as I used to be, but I recall some folks worried about more birch taking up space up north bc of how often burns were happening and birch loves to form massive stands when the floor clears.

[edawg88]

Thank you for sharing!

[Teever]

Is it the case that Canada has been implemented substantial forest fire prevention practices?

I’m not an expert in forestry. It it doesn’t seem feasible that Canada was every really doing any large scale forest fire prevention simply due to the scale of the country and forests within it.