“Perspectives” by Gerry Warner

Op-Ed Commentary

Look at the picture above.

Has an atomic bomb exploded over Cranbrook? Was the epi-centre of the blast just northwest of the St. Eugene Mission? What on earth is going on here? Relax folks, it’s just “forestry” as practiced today. And every other day for that matter in “Beautiful BC.”

What you’re looking at is commonly called a “prescribed burn.” It’s part of a process to “renew” the forest and truth to say it regularly happens all over B.C. and other parts of the world too. Most fires, especially in the conifer forests covering most of B.C., are caused by lightning and have been occurring since time immemorial. So far, so good. But then man gets into the act and that’s when things can go sideways and often do.

A few paragraphs above I used the word “forestry,” which in my Webster’s New World Dictionary is defined as “the science of planting and taking care of forests.”

Please note the taking care part of that definition because you live in a province where “taking care” of the forest means industrial forestry which is mainly practiced three ways: clear- cutting the forest to bare ground, burning the slash (waste) left behind and replanting by hand which in many cases involves prescribed burns.

Foresters say prescribed burns “imitate nature” and there’s some truth in that.

However, when Nature goes about its wonderful ways renewing the earth it does so its own way. Man’s way is only a pale reflection. And let’s be honest, when man says he’s “imitating Nature” he’s really making money and so-called “prescribed burns” are really an attempt to turbocharge the renewal process so man can greedily make as much money as he can.

Please look at the picture above again which I took April 28. Can you imagine the volume of greenhouse gases (GHG) that spewed out over our region Friday? Isn’t climate change supposed to be the most serious and dangerous environmental challenge of our time? Politicians of all parties talk about it endlessly. Aren’t we
being challenged by more catastrophic forest fires every year? Increasing wild fires are costing us millions. Lives are being lost and wildlife habitat destroyed.

Then why are we allowing conflagrations like the one Friday take place?

Are there alternatives? You’re damn right there are, but the people of B.C. don’t seem to care as we callously look the other way and let the countryside burn.

One of the fire guards at the scene Friday told me it was just a matter of getting rid of “trash forest” in the undergrowth to get a new forest going or to convert the forest to grassland. Again, there may be some truth in that if you accept the model of industrial forestry trying to squeeze every dollar it can from Mother Nature by
fast tracking a new forest or grassland. But couldn’t this kind of work be better done by hand with a minimum of fire and using small hand tools to cut and pile the unwanted timber and burn it in a more controlled manner?

You would also create more jobs that way and do so without endangering wildlife or human-built structures like houses or barns – or as was the case Friday – threatening to cancel flights at the Cranbrook Airport.

What about human health when mammoth prescribed burns are lit between communities as close as Cranbrook and Kimberley? Wood smoke contains 100 poisonous chemicals such as carbon monoxide, methane, volatile organic compounds, dioxins, lead, cadmium and arsenic. It also contains harmful toxins and other substances known to cause cancer.

Is it really necessary to force Cranbrook and Kimberley residents to sit under a toxic, cancerous, mushroom cloud to allow basic forestry to take place? Of course not! And isn’t it time the public demanded an end to such dangerous practices?

I certainly think so.

Gerry Warner is a retired journalist, who believes in protecting forests instead of burning them.

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