Canadian Wildfires Prove That Proper Forest Management Beats ‘Green’ Plans

It’s the same every fire season: Armchair experts and green campaigners confuse poor forest management with climate change, and then they use that confusion to justify their plans to remake the economy and control your energy use.

Just as they did in 2023, true believers are claiming that the Canadian wildfires that last week darkened the skies over the Eastern Seaboard are “climate change coming home to roost on your roof.” Their solution is to shut down reliable energy and force you to subsidize solar, wind, and electric vehicles again. “Do all this and more now,” they argue, “so that the smoke does not return.”

But blaming wildfires on climate change is a handy distraction from real solutions that could actually help manage the wildfire issue. Rather than admitting that their green plans exacerbate wildfire risks by stopping people from using and managing forested areas, environmental activists double down, pretending that if they can ban gasoline and natural gas, wildfires will simply disappear.

We all know that wildfires existed long before Henry Ford began rolling Flathead V8s off his assembly lines. More reasonable voices must correct the narrative by repeatedly explaining how wildfires have been around for as long as the world has had forests, and that, while warm air can make fires more intense, it does not cause them. For the uninitiated, ignition sources (like arsonists and lightning) do, when they’re united with air and a fuel source.

Faced with ongoing climate claims, more reasonable sources must each year further correct the record by showing that the warm conditions we are experiencing are what people used to call “summer.” In fact, these warm temperatures are not unprecedented; North America has seen hot, dry summers like this before.

Each year, we are informed that climate-driven wildfires are rapidly expanding in both size and number, and that the situation is worse than ever before. But forest managers continue to point out that we have seen much larger fires in the past, and that the most recent reports show that the area burned by wildfires in the Americas this year is still below the average for the past decade.

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Additionally, the people pointing out an increasing number of wildfires and greater area burned typically start their fire “histories” in the 1970s or 1980s. But neither history nor wildfires began in the last few decades.

Extending the timeline farther back indicates that “the largest fire recorded in the U.S. was the Miramichi Fire in Maine, in 1825, which burned 3 million acres. Four of the 10 largest fires reported in the United States occurred in or before 1910. The remaining six all occurred after 2000. The most devastating forest fire is the Peshtigo Fire, which occurred in October 1871 in Wisconsin. That single fire killed over 1,200 people and burned up to 1.5 million acres.”

A New England Historical Society article recounts the story of the “Dark Day,” May 19, 1780. The description explains how smoke from “a massive wildfire in Canadian forests” mixed with winds from the west to create a “day as dark as night,” where candles were needed to see and frightened legislators believed the dark signaled the day of judgment.

As we look back further than 1970, we find that wildfires and hot, dry summers often come in cycles. Canadian climate researcher Stephen McIntyre elaborates on this reality, noting that “massive wildfires are part of Canadian CLIMATE, not climate CHANGE.”

And while wildfires are a normal part of living in and around forests, the reality is that poor forest management practices can make them worse by allowing forests to become dense, overgrown, and overmature. Unmanaged forests are ripe for massive fires, especially when a disease or insect infestation kills portions of them.

When forests are not managed, built-up fuels can be difficult or impossible to extinguish when they begin to burn. The situation in Canada is made worse by the fact that the burning forests are often remote, with no infrastructure or roads for access. That means moving equipment and crews to the fires takes a lot of time and money.

The policy takeaway is clear: If we refuse to manage our forests, Mother Nature will do it for us, and we often won’t like the results. Where possible, we should manage forests actively to reduce fuel buildup and wildfire risk. Allowing active harvesting, spacing, thinning, and prescribed fires can reduce these fuels under controlled conditions and lessen the likelihood of wildfires and the intensity of those that do occur.

More importantly, active forest management can begin to address the issue today. Continuing to listen to green activists who have shut off access to natural areas and who now want to shut off your access to essential fuels and energy will only worsen the situation.