Editor:
I too attended the Community Forest/Elder College Wildfire Information Session but came away with a very different perspective than some of the previous letter writers. Possibly because I have a career of over 40 years in the wildland fire and emergency risk management business. What was presented, and correctly so, was a range of options. Mr. Blackwell presented managing the understorey fuels to improve the forest fuel structure and hazard, not logging it. Mr. Bradley presented a selective harvesting option in appropriate areas to manage forest fuel structure and promote a regrowth of a less hazardous deciduous forest.
Logging and fuel management have very different objectives. Logging is largely tied to dollars per cubic metre, whereas the fuel management objective is to reduce the fuel hazard and in turn reduce the rate of spread, energy release and ember producing potential of a wildfire. In my experience, the most merchantable trees are seldom the problem, although there can be occasions where logging for fuel management can be achieved. Logging can be effective if the objective is to convert a high hazard conifer forest into a less hazardous deciduous forest. This requires a comprehensive landscape wildfire risk assessment to determine what fuel management strategies will work best and where. A one-size-fits-all solution does not exist.
Mr. Blackwell correctly stated that if individual property owners in wildland urban interface areas don’t manage the vulnerability of their homes and manage the adjacent fuels as recommended by FireSmart Canada, then logging/fuel management on public lands is “not worth a hill of beans.” This is well recognized globally.
Modern fire suppression technology is hopeless against the extremes of nature. Depending upon the forest fuels, a crown fire will release 10 to 20 times the energy that modern fire suppression can cope with. When this happens, the only option for public and firefighters alike is to get out of the way.
Al Beaver, Gibsons
