Comox Valley Naturalists Society

August, 2003
Frank Hovenden

As I write this column, a multitude of forest fires are burning across British Columbia. With news flashes of water bombers, and flames jumping skyward, it is hard not to get caught up in the adrenaline rush of the moment. While forest fires may be catastrophic to private property, they are in fact a natural ecological process and one we must learn to live with.

Forest fires have always been part of the ecology of our forests, and our forests and trees are adapted to live with it. More than half of the fires presently burning were started by natural causes such as lighting. Despite fire safety education we will never prevent these fires from starting, so it is time we started to adjust our living patterns.

The forest ecosystems of BC have been classified by the frequency that a stand initiation event occurs. This means how often a forest may be destroyed naturally, and is called a natural disturbance type. On the West Coast of Vancouver Island are ecosysems with rare stand-initiating events (NDT1). Generally these forest are too wet to support large scale fires, and in a natural system most new forests start from small blowdown patches.

At the other extreme are areas such as the Okanagan and the Chilcotin. These forest ecosysems have frequent stand maintaining fires(NDT4). In parts of these areas natural fires may have occurred every 10 years or less. Many of the trees that occur here have adapted to live and survive in this fire-dominated ecosystem. The thick bark of the Douglas fir and the Ponderosa pine allows them to survive small ground fires. The cones of the lodgepole pine are called serrotinous and in fact need the extreme heat of a fire to open and spread their seed.

There have many changes in our environment and landscape patterns which have made this years' fires worse than historical fires. Unfortunately the future outlook is even bleaker.

Climate change is ocurring faster than many have anticipated. This has resulted in hotter drier summers for many parts of our province. Fire seasons are longer and hotter. Winters have also been warmer. This has accelerated the bark beetle problem in much of the interior parts of our province. This insect, which kills mature pine trees, is killed by severe winter temperatures. These low temperatures have not occurred in recent years. As a result many interior forests are tinderboxes of dead pine trees.

A second reason for increased concern is the false security given by our fire fighting capacity. Forest fire suppression has been the law of the land for many years and has been hugely successful. Water bombers and helicopters have helped douse all but the most remote fires. Natural fire patterns have been surpressed for many years. As a result fuel levels have increased dramatically in our forests. We no longer have the quick moving light fires which would reduce the fuel supply. Many fires are now more severe due to this increased fuel supply that has been allowed to accumulate in our forests.

A third reason for the increasing danger of our recent fires has been our settlement patterns. What is known as the urban-forest interface has increased dramatically. Historically towns were more defined and discreet. Now towns are surrounded by large numbers of rural dwellers living in and around our forests. While the settings may be idyllic, during a fire these properties may be very susceptible to wild fire. Scattered houses in the forest are far harder to protect than a town standing apart from the forest.

This years' fire season is looking to be a record year in terms of cost and property damage. This should be a wakeup call for British Columbia to look at our relationship with the natural process called wild fire.

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