Eli Pivnick – Apr 14, 2026 / 11:00 am |
According to one researcher, the highest severity fires occur in young to intermediate age previously logged forests. The risk of forest fires is higher than in unlogged forests for up to 70 years.
Recently, the phrase “active forest management” has come into usage by the forest industry in numerous countries.
In Australia, the equivalent terms are “forest gardening” and “cultural thinning.”
Active forest management involves direct human intervention—such as thinning, removing woody debris, logging, planting, and prescribed burning—to improve forest health, reduce wildfire severity, and enhance ecosystem resilience.
The concept is convenient for the forest industry because it allows companies to continue doing what they have done since the onset of industrial logging—cut down forests. Better yet, the industry is promoting the idea that logging is a solution to the wildfire problem we now face. Actually, the massive cutting down of forests in B.C. and elsewhere has created the problem that the industry wants to solve by more cutting down of what is left of our primary or unlogged forests.
Clear cutting forests creates several problems. First, it dries out the land. Without the shade that trees create to cool the land, and without tree roots holding back the water from snow melt and precipitation, the land becomes highly susceptible to fire. Frequently, forest fires start in recent clear cuts.
Clear cutting, when as widespread as it is in much of B.C., creates much higher risks of flooding and landslides in spring and then droughts in summer. Recent research by Younes Alila and co-workers at UBC have shown this very clearly. Those droughts, exacerbated by climate change, increase fire risk in clear cut areas.
I attended a recent symposium on active forest management. Two of the researchers have devoted their careers to understanding how fires and forests interact, David Lindenmayer, of the Australian National University, and Dominic DellaSala, president of the Geos Institute in Oregon. According to Lindenmayer, the highest severity fires occur in young to intermediate age previously logged forests. The risk of forest fires is higher than in unlogged forests for up to 70 years.
Cutting down forests increases greenhouse gas emissions. The vast majority of the biomass of a forest is burned as slash, rots in place as woody debris, or is made into paper and other short-lived products, rapidly emitting CO2 and thereby contributing to climate change. As well, young forests do not absorb as much CO2 as mature forests. Finally, increasing wildfires also increase greenhouse gas emissions. Based on B.C. government statistics, in seven of the last 10 years, greenhouse gas emissions from our forests, including those from wildfires, have been greater than all human-caused emissions combined in B.C.
The extent of recent logging in B.C. and in many other provinces has decimated wildlife populations of many species. Spotted owls are no longer found in the wild in B.C., mountain caribou populations have declined rapidly, as have other lesser known species which depend on older forests.
Why would we need to manage forests? Indigenous peoples around the world have lived in forests and managed them in limited ways for millenia, mostly using fires to improve habitat for wildlife as well as for growing crops. Large scale logging or thinning was never available to them.
According to Lindenmayer, prescribed burns or forest thinning are only somewhat effective to protect infrastructure and only if done within one kilometre and carried out every five to seven years. If not repeated, the effect is to increase the fire risk up to seven times, for 40-50 years. According to DellaSala, the bigger problem of forest fires in the U.S. is human behaviour. As access to, and building in, forests increases, so do forest fires.
According to both researchers, salvage logging after fires or insect damage only delays the recovery of the forests by removing the remaining healthy trees and their shade, compacting the soil, building more logging roads, eliminating habitat for the insects and birds that depend on damaged forests, and giving more access to invasive species.
In the U.S., DellaSala estimates that thinning of the forests in key spotted owl habitat could reduce available habitat three to six times more than forest fires would, over 40 years.
DellaSala cautions that large trees must be left intact and thinning must concentrate on brush and small trees. Also, a prescribed burn can be part of the solution but not piling the debris to burn it as this will cause soil damage. Obliterating roads to limit public access should always be a part of the effort.
Many researchers stress primary forests—those that have never been logged (even if fire or insect damaged)—are our best defence against wildfire. Leaving primary forests alone is also a key tenet of two proposals for changes in B.C. forestry policy by two activist groups in the province.
Conservation North in Prince George proposes a three-zone system and the Boundary Forest Watershed Stewardship Society is promoting a new forest act.
Primary forests are a key to fire resistance as well as to biodiversity and watershed protection.
This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
https://www.vancouverislandwaterwatchcoalition.ca/wp-admin/post.php?post=7067&action=edit
