Oak: Up in smoke      

“The fires are caused by human mismanagement of the forest”

By Oak Duke, photo from Amity NY by Brian Cannon

As of this writing, the largest fire in Ontario is near Timmins, and it is estimated at 350,000 hectares.

That size designation doesn’t probably mean much to most, but for reference, Rhode Island is 400,000 hectares.

One of many growing conflagrations throughout Canada, the Timmins wildfire is as large as our smallest state… but still growing.

To be more local for perspective…Steuben County is 360,000 hectares, about the same size as the Timmins fire right now.

Neighbor Allegany County is 267,000 hectares.

Hard to imagine the devastation wrought by a fire that widespread, out of control and expanding.

And it is only one named fire of 830 according to Canadian officials, with over 100 out of control.  

Timmins is due north of Toronto, about 450 miles, over a seven-hour drive.

Sure, we are suffering with smoke, way down here in the states.

But… whole communities are being evacuated up there.

Yes, it’s terrible here, but a catastrophe there.

Those poor people up in Canada where I hunted and fished.

Timmins area, Kirkland Lake.

The Canadian wilderness.

Literally, up in smoke.

Evacuations spell human tragedy, not to mention the catastrophe to wildlife and the ecological biosphere.

Many of the fires throughout the Canadian providences are out of control.

Not just my words, but the Canadian governments’.

Let that one sink in.

Down here in Western New York the smoke has been terrible for days.

Dangerously unhealthy to breathe, especially to elderly folks and those of us with lung and immune system issues.

But those people up there are in the fire zone, their homes, their businesses, their way of life… destroyed.

As of this writing, Thursday night, there are 150 large fires burning throughout Ontario, mostly with no end in sight, according to reports.

And the wildfire smoke from Ontario is only a portion of the terrible pall, swooping down on the lower 48 states, many more fires are burning throughout the other Canadian providences.

Ironically, the number of fires is decreasing, which may sound at first like a good thing… but the reality is they are merging, coming together… and therefore considered as one named fire by the Canadian emergency services.

Hard to keep an exact tab on the number of fires.

One could say, northern Ontario is burning.

When we google, “What is causing these fires?”

A stock answer. 

An inane answer… typical AI.

Goes like, “The fires are caused by lightning strikes and human fires out of control.”

What a bunch of word salad.

Does anyone buy that crap?

The answer is simple… and more insidious. The fires are caused by human mismanagement of the forest.

Greed.

Mismanagement.

That’s why, to a large degree, we never had smoke from Canada before.

Human beings.

Surprise… Suprise.  

Maybe not the right word.

How ‘bout no management of the forest, zero. A complete lack of foresight and concern for the future.

Especially back in the past during the 1980s and 1990s when I hunted up there.

I saw it happen. 

Just cut and harvest everything… every stick, log, bark, root and twig to feed the pulp (paper) and plywood industry.

I hunted up there on the cusp of the Arctic Watershed, back before the new century and the internet.

And from my perspective, the reason…the cause of the wildfires being out of control now is logging practices or the lack thereof.

Back then, we learned a new word.

“Scarified.”

Well, the work scarified means a different thing now, nuanced, compared to back in the day, (now gulp,) almost 50 years ago when I made my annual pilgrimage to Kirkland Lake to bear hunt in the spring.

And there, fish for speckled trout (aka specks) and walleye, which were called “pickerel” by the locals.

It’s a long drive, through many miles and miles of Canadian “bush,” as we called it.

But as the years ticked by, large areas of completely clearcut forest appeared along the drive past North Bay, the Temagami, Algonkin Park, up to Swastika and Kirkland Lake, near the Quebec border.

We hunted black bear on the edges of recently made clearcuts…barren ground, as far as one could see.

It was Scarified all right.

Forever scared.

Gone were the old trees and the diversity.

And this unbroken monoculture of new growth saplings that replaced the forest stretched for as far as the eye could see in places.

Yes, warming climate has certainly had a lot to do with accelerating the accelerants.

But imagine…no breaks, no barriers, nothing to physically stop these immense conflagrations.

The harvesting of trees today, is not like it was in the past.

Now, with machines like Feller Bunchers, cutting multiple trees, and grouping them together for processing; Harvesters… with computer-controlled processing heads, that take trees down, cut in lengths and stack for processing can quickly cut swaths in any stretch of woods.

Long gone are the days when men used chainsaws and axes to fell timber, one by one, tree by tree.

These new machines cut trees like lawn mowers cut grass.

And what grew up?

Vast, expansive monocultures of scrub trees which became tinder dry over countless miles.

And to a large degree the result is: what we see and smell, this current smoke we are choking on, down here, so many miles south of the great White North that is going up in smoke.