In this episode, I take a look at the possibility that antler development in elk, may not be just about romance, but may have a secondary purpose. I also take one more look at fires in the mountain west and what we can do to reduce future conflagrations
Why do elk keep their antlers so much longer than other members of the deer family?
The rutting season for elk and moose ended in October and while the moose rut often goes unwitnessed, the elk rut is characterized by loud bugling displays, watersports, and aggressive behaviour. If you spend any time in elk territory, you’ll know when the mating season is taking place.
All summer long, the elk, along with their relatives the moose and mule deer, grow antlers in preparation for the autumn mating season, or rut. Antlers are one of the coolest structures in nature. Because the strategy of most members of the deer family is based upon competition for the opportunity to mate, they’ve evolved amazing headgear.
Antlers are one of the fastest growing tissues found in nature. If you see a bull elk during the summer, and you see that same elk one day later, his antlers can be as much as 1-1/4 cm or half an inch longer – perceptively larger in just one day…a big bull moose’s antlers can grow as much as 2 cm or three quarters of an inch in the same time.
This begs the question, where do they get the calcium to grow their antlers? As far as I know, grass is not a USDA approved source of calcium. The simple answer is that it comes from their own bones…in particular their rib cage. Since only a very healthy male will be able to divert enough resources to grow a trophy set of antlers, it’s natures way of making sure that only the healthiest males get the opportunity to pass their genes onto the next generation.
To a biologist, antlers are referred to as a frill, something that the animal evolves that’s not necessary to survival, but necessary for mating, so some might argue essential for enjoying surviving.
During the mating season, elk congregate in large groups. While the males are ready and willing to mate, the females come into season much later. This creates intense competition between bulls forcing them to display their fitness to show the females they’re worthy.
Over time, elk developed more and more elaborate displays. Their bugling calls carry for miles on the airwaves. They have an incredible facility with spraying urine all over their bodies. I know, that’s gross, but in nature, it’s the original Eau de Toilette. There is nothing sexier to a female elk…except maybe a really exceptional rack of antlers.
When all the display and bugling are done, as the saying goes…the antlers make the male. A large set of antlers provides a formidable deterrent against males with an inferior set of headgear.
Time and again, I’ve seen younger bulls make a valiant effort courting a few females, only to see a dominant bull simply arrive on the scene and escort them all away, all without complaint or challenge from the younger stag.
All of this makes sense when you look at it. In addition to lots of bugling and urine, the antlers help to determine which male gets to mate with the majority of females.
Once the rut is done, it makes sense to get rid of the antlers as soon as possible once the mating season is over. After all, these things can weight as much as 5.5 kg per side. Keep in mind, every gram of weight we carry, we need to feed. They need to be strong enough to carry these heavy pieces of headgear
By Christmas, deer and moose have shed their antlers. Elk, on the other hand, retain them throughout the winter, despite the costs in terms of energy.
Prior to antlers being shed, the body reabsorbs some of the calcium lost to antler growth, not all, but a bit. This is why shed antlers are more brittle than they were when they were on the animal. Then, at the base of the antler, a specialized layer of cells forms that provides a weak connection to the skull, and then finally, they simply fall off, often one at a time. It is possible to see a one antlered elk, deer, or moose during the period when they are shedding.
I wrote an article about this years ago and the title of the article was: Is that your final antler?
Not only do elk retain their antlers until spring, but they shed them over a very long period, up to 2-3 months. This is unique to elk and seems to imply the antlers might serve a secondary purpose.
In most members of the deer family, antler shedding takes place over a short period. Retaining antlers long beyond the mating season indicates there must be some evolutionary benefit to doing so. Every day an elk carries excess weight around carries with it a cost in terms of energy expended.
Pardon the pun, but the point of antlers is very well understood during the mating season, but the reasons elk might retain them beyond the rut has never been studied in detail
It seemed obvious to biologists that there must be another reason to retain them as the energy cost is simply too high.
In a recent study by Matthew C Metz and others, researchers looked at elk antlers and the reasons why they might retain them beyond the mating season. They also examined reasons why elk might not shed their antlers over a short period as is normal with other deer species. In contrast, they spread the shedding period out over several months.
To the biologists studying elk, these behaviours indicated antlers had to have a secondary purpose. One possibility was that retaining antlers might help with fighting off predators. As you can imagine, a fully armed elk would make a much more formidable prey than an antlerless one. Now while that may seem logical, it still needed to be tested empirically to make sure that the science backs the presumption.
There is another factor that comes into play in this scenario. Elk begin growing a fresh set of antlers as soon as they shed the previous rack. That means an elk that sheds early in the season has more time to regrow their antlers for the next mating season. It seems logical than that early shedders, having more time to grow antlers, they may have a bigger rack come the rutting season. This, in turn, may improve their chances to successfully mate.
Now for the bad news. Elk are also food. In fact for wolves, they’re often the preferred prey species, rating higher than mule and white-tail deer, and even moose. An antlerless elk can make for an easier target for hungry wolves than one still sporting bony headgear.
Looking at the way elk seem to select the timing of antler shedding, led researchers to investigate the possible reasons why some elk may shed earlier than others. Their research showed that elk that shed their antlers early are, in fact, more heavily hunted by wolves. This is despite the fact that elk that shed early are usually healthier than elk retaining antlers and thus continuing to squander energy resources.
In most predator-prey studies, it’s been shown time and again, that predators seek out the weak or injured individuals, while in this case, the antlerless elk are, in fact, the healthier males in the herd.
This led biologists to investigate whether, despite being in poorer condition as a result of retaining antlers, the antlers themselves may serve a function in deterring predators from attacking.
There has been a tonne of research over the years looking at how antlers impact reproductive strategies, but there has been little interest in what happens once the mating season ends. Do the antlers serve any additional purpose other than in determining who gets to mate?
This is the first study to specifically look at the science behind elks retention of antlers long after the mating season has ended.
While the casting of antlers is usually triggered by changes in hormone levels, or in temperate regions, the amount of daylight, some animals still exhibit huge variation in the timing of their shedding.
This study shows that the older and more dominant males generally shed their antlers much earlier than younger males. This seems counter to the concept that shedding at the earliest possible moment would be the best thing for all members of a population in terms of energy conservation.
When it comes to predator protection though, elk find themselves in a unique situation. Of all the deer species, in most of the habitats where elk and wolves coexist, it seems elk are the preferred species of prey.
This particular study took place in Yellowstone and it investigated whether antlers served an effective role as a predator deterrent. It looked at wolf kills of male elk during the period of 2004-2016. A total of 8 different species of hooved are available for wolves to prey upon, but the data shows that elk are the most commonly selected menu items.
Male elk, especially dominant bulls, are popular prey for wolves in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. After the rut, they enter the lean winter months in poor condition. There are many factors that determine which individuals a wolf pack will select. These include the physical size, age, and health of an individual animal. If the presence of antlers alters prey selection, this would show that antlers have an important secondary role for elk. It would also help us understand why they choose to keep the antlers long after the rutting season is over.
When researchers looked at 55 different encounters between elk and wolves, those individuals without antlers were 3.6 times more likely to be attacked. If at least one member of a group remained antlerless, wolves were 85% more likely to attack, and the elk without headgear was specifically targeted. With that being said, with a sample size of only 55 incidents, biologists didn’t feel confident enough to make any definitive conclusion.
They decided to investigate the carcasses of elk killed by wolves to see if there was a preference for antlered or antlerless individuals. This was a much richer data source. They looked at carcasses of elk at least 2 years old and older to see what the ratio between antlered and antlerless elk was.
They also looked at two different periods. During the early part of March, antlerless elk are rare, while after March 15, the incidence of antlerless elk rises quickly as more and more elk shed their headgear. Both periods showed a strong preference for antlerless individuals, even though those individuals were in better physical condition than antlered elk.
This is contrary to the common belief that wolves select old, weak, and injured animals. In fact, the data showed that the presence of antlers was a strong deterrent to predators. Wolves would choose elk lacking headgear even though those individuals were likely healthier and had higher fat reserves.
If this is true, then why don’t all of the elk keep their antlers as long as possible? Looking at the carcasses of wolf-killed elk, older animals, those 5-years old or older, were more likely to shed their antlers early if they were in good physical condition. Since new antlers begin to grow immediately after shedding in elk, this gave them a head start on growing a new set for the next rutting season.
Since the percentage of fat in bone marrow is a good reflection of health, for every 20% increase in fat the bull elk was 2.1 times more likely to shed their antlers early. Now while a 20% increase in marrow fat may sound like we’re talking about a very healthy animal, it only translated to a 1% increase in the total health of the animal.
When it comes to the rutting season, males with the largest and strongest antlers have the greatest opportunity to mate. The high-quality food available during the early part of the shedding season helps them to get a head start on competing males when it comes to antler growth…that is if they survive the higher risk of predation that comes with early shedding.
It’s basically a risk vs reward scenario. Shedding early runs the risk of being preyed upon by wolves, but if they survive that risk, they get a good head start on antler growth. Generally, in nature, the drive to reproduce represents one of the most important motivations in any animal population.
Younger elk, those less than 5 years old, took a very different approach. Their likelihood of outcompeting older bulls during the rutting season is usually slim at best. Therefore, there is little motivation for early casting. This study showed they delay casting until much later. Retaining antlers as long as possible helps reduce the likelihood of falling prey to wolves during the early part of the season, yet held little risk since they weren’t likely to have an opportunity to mate the following season anyway.
As these elk age, they will feel the pull to shed earlier and will eventually take their place in the fall battle for the right to reproduce.
This is the first study to show that wolves don’t always select weaker individuals, but rather they select those animals that are easier to kill. Bull elk retaining their antlers, even though they may be in poorer overall condition, still have a formidable weapon to wield against predators. Wolves have responded by changing their prey selection to antlerless individuals, regardless of their overall condition. Even a healthy antlerless elk is a safer bet than a nutritionally challenged bull with a large set of potentially lethal antlers.
Every predator understands the risks involved with making their prey selection. Every attack comes with the risk of injury and even death. Most prey animals are not without the ability to protect themselves. Predators must choose the right individual and the right situation before they risk an attack.
This doesn’t explain why mule and white-tail deer, along with moose shed their antlers much earlier in the season. Usually, they shed by Christmas. This means elk retain their antlers for a good three months after all their relatives have shed theirs.
Elk though, far more than deer and moose, are the preferred prey of wolves. It is this preference that’s shaped their behaviour in retaining their antlers much longer than either of their relatives.
Deer flee when they encounter a wolf so while they shed their antlers several months earlier than elk, they don’t suffer the same selection bias that elk experience. Male elk, on the other hand, often stand their ground when confronted with wolves. In this situation, a formidable set of antlers can act as a strong deterrent.
Caribou also shed their antlers much earlier than elk. Historically their preference for remote, deeply snow-covered landscapes offers them sufficient protection from wolves. In recent years, increased human use of the backcountry has allowed wolves to follow established trails and find themselves within hunting distance of caribou. Add to this extensive logging in formerly pristine caribou country. This created the perfect habitat for moose, and with the moose came even more wolves. Caribou, in some ways, are merely an accidental prey for wolves that were attracted by moose.
Way back in Episode 43, I looked at an attempt in British Columbia to control wolf populations in caribou country by dramatically increasing the number of moose hunting permits. The hope is that if they reduce the moose population that the wolf population will naturally drop as well. You can listen to this story at www.MountainNaturePodcast.com/ep043.
Fires in California, and a look at B.C.’s report on the 2017 fire season
As I write this today, the fires in California are finally largely under control, in part due to recent rains that carry with them their own set of hazards. Fires in the state have killed at least 83 people making them the most deadly in the state’s history. It also illustrates one of the disturbing changes related to climate change; fire seasons that begin to last 12-months long.
Unfortunately, while rains connected to an El Niño off the coast are beginning to bring long-needed moisture to the state, but when it comes to El Niño when it rains, it pours. The fear is that it may bring flash floods and mudslides to an already devastated landscape.
I don’t think anyone can read the news stories of the California fires without a sense of horror, and empathize with the people that have lost property, family members, and more. The potential for flash flooding adds to the tragedy.
After all the devastation witnessed throughout western North America this year, it’s easy to ask the question…why? British Columbia has asked, answered, and ignored it time and time again. This has been a constant reality in many areas of western North America over the past few years. When it comes to California, I’ll wait for follow-up research that will help us understand the intricacies of that particular fire.
However, when it comes to western Canada, the causes of our fire woes have been studied again and again. It’s the results that have been ignored. I’ve been wading through an extensive report produced by the province of British Columbia after the 2017 fire season became the worst ever in the province…that is until this year surpassed it once again.
The report, entitled: Addressing the New Normal: 21st Century Disaster Management in British Columbia, is a massive 148-page report looking at every aspect of the fires, along with some other related disasters, in particular, flood. For the first time, the province has accepted the simple fact, that fires and floods may be simply opposite sides of the same coin.
As California may be discovering, fire can often set the stage for future floods. Without trees to absorb rainwater, the water flows much faster towards the river channel, often with devastating results.
The report’s mandate was to look at several four major topics:
- Planning and preparedness
- Prevention and mitigation
- Response and
- Recovery
One of the most interesting aspects of the report was a detailed look into a similar report produced after the devastating fires of 2003. It was produced by the Honourable Gary Filmon, former Premier of Manitoba. It was called: Firestorm 2003: Provincial Review.
Filmon’s review was detailed and extensive. In fact, if you want the Cole’s Notes version of the 2017 report, it was: “we should have just done what was recommended in the Filmon Report”.
A big component of the Filmon report focused on fuel reduction along the interface between urban areas and forested ones. This forest-urban interface has been a major component of the recent California fires as well.
As a result of the report, the province created the Strategic Wildfire Prevention Initiative or SWPI. The province was given a report that detailed more than a million hectares of areas that contained hazardous fuels.
Treating these areas to reduce fire came at a stiff cost: roughly $5,000 or more per hectare. In some areas, timber extraction could help the province recoup some of the cost of fuel reduction.
Unfortunately, of the more than 1 million hectares identified, the province treated a mere 78,000. The provinces Auditor General estimated the cost of treating the most high risk 800,000 ha at $6.7 billion.
According to this most recent report:
“Despite earnest efforts, BC has made disappointingly little progress on the goal of enhanced community safety since 2003. As the BC Auditor General recently reported (2018), at least 80 communities have completed Community Wildfire Protection Plans but have not undertaken on-the-ground fuel mitigation. Further, ‘approximately 49 per cent of communities who have completed plans have not completed any operational treatments’.”
When asked why the work wasn’t done, it was a common response:
“Most, if not all, local taxpayer dollars are committed to building and maintaining water, sewer, roads, street lights, parks and recreation and solid waste infrastructure. How can we justify spending local tax dollars on treatment of adjacent provincial Crown lands as we struggle to maintain that infrastructure?”
It’s the age-old conundrum. We know what we should do, but who will pay for it. Looking back after the 2017 season, it was clear that a more sustainable plan was needed for treating wildland-urban interface areas more quickly and at a reduced cost. They determined that to achieve this goal, they must do the following:
- “A comprehensive strategic plan identifying those communities at greatest risk from wildfire, coupled with a commitment to treat those most at risk regardless of the ability of local governments to pay.
- Broader use of post-harvest residual wood fibre for biomass energy production wherever possible and practical.
- More low-cost, landscape-level treatments (including prescribed burns) that can slow, divert or even halt large-scale wildfires.
- Greater use of prescribed burning to achieve fuel mitigation at both the interface and landscape levels, in partnership with First Nations, incorporate greater traditional use of fire as Indigenous Peoples have been doing for millennia.
- Addressing land use plan protected areas (such as old-growth management areas and ungulate winter range) with high concentrations of diseased or dead trees within wildland urban interface areas where community safety may be threatened.
- With wildland-urban interface areas, revisit post-harvest replanting requirements for forest licenses so community safety is considered first and foremost.
- Move remaining SWPI (Strategic Wildfire Prevention Initiative) resources into the Forest Enhancement Society of BC and include municipal representation on the Forest Enhancement Society Board.
- Within wildland-urban interface areas, mandate building code and/or development permit requirements for use of fireproof building materials and promote expanded use of sprinkler technology.
- Fund and foster a revitalized FireSmart program and encourage dynamic partnerships with local and First Nations governments as well as the participation of large private landholders.
- Expand the community forest program to other communities where interest and capacity exist.
- Where community forests do not exist, work with forest licensees to develop fuel mitigation models in conjunction with the Forest Enhancement Society.
- Regularly evaluate the effectiveness of treatment and mitigation strategies at both the interface and landscape levels.”
Imagine if these goals had been addressed after the 2003 fire season. If the government really focused on these goals, it could eliminate a vast amount of forest fire damage to communities now and in the future.
The hardest part of reading media reports about wildfires is that it always leads to one conclusion: forest fires are bad! In fact, forest fires are as essential for forest ecosystems are the plants, animals, and birds that call the ecosystem home.
An ecosystem is defined as a community of plants and animals and the processes that link them to each other and to the physical environment.
The processes that link them to each other are things like fires, floods, avalanches, insects, disease, and any other regular disturbance that resets the landscape’s clock and results in forest regeneration.
A forest without fire is not a forest. As long as there have been forests on this planet, there have been fires. Whenever you have a regular, and inevitable disturbance to the landscape, whether that is fire, flood, insect, or other factors, the ecosystem will adapt to and begin to rely upon.
Western forests have a recurring life-cycle. Different stages of forest succession support different species of animals. For more than 10,000 years, our First Nations have used forest fire as a force for good. They realized that without fire, there were fewer bison and bighorn sheep to hunt.
While we like to look at the landscape around us today and imagine that it always looked that way, little could be farther from the truth.
Explorers like David Thompson, and even Tom Wilson, saw a very different landscape when they arrived into the mountain west. Instead of endless forests of coniferous trees, one touching the other, reaching from the valleys of the Montane to the subalpine, they were greeted by a very different landscape.
Before Europeans imposed their will on the mountain west, they were greeted by a much more open landscape. Instead of fire suppression, they experienced a wilderness forged by wildfire, bursting with wildlife and birds, and met native cultures that were as connected to the landscape as the animals they hunted to sustain themselves.
We all know that the natives of the plains relied upon bison for their very survival, but what about when they ventured into the mountains during the summer months? The simple answer…bison. The mountain front didn’t stop bison from engineering the landscape to their benefit.
When Banff National Park archaeologists look at ancient campsites and the bones of animals that sustained early native peoples for the past 10,000 years, there is one clear winner: bison. The bones of bison comprised 48% of all the bones recovered at ancient campsites, followed by 37% of bighorn sheep. Elk and deer were a measly 7% each and moose and mountain goat an insignificant 1% each.
Bison thrived on landscapes regularly cleansed by fire. For as long as these landscapes have been free of glaciers, first nations people have been helping to manage the ecosystems with regular fires. The wildlife thrived, the birds thrived, the plants thrived, and the ecosystem flourished.
The patchwork landscapes that greeted David Thompson meant that fires were much more limited in their ability to spread. In these open canopy forests, the grasslands were the mechanism that carried the fires to the adjacent stands of forests. There were other factors that played a role, such as topography, elevation, local weather. Each acted in concert with fires either aiding or limiting their spread.
In May of 2017, Forest Ecologist Paul Hessburg presented a TED Talk on his work as a fire ecologist. It’s one of the best explanations of how fire historically affected our landscape and how we’ve changed the natural fire cycle over the past 100 years, eventually creating the desperate situation we see ourselves today. You can watch the presentation by clicking on the following link:
Paul Hessburg: Why wildfires have gotten worse — and what we can do about it
Here are some of the main points brought to light in Paul’s presentation. Because of the patchy character of the forests, fires were limited by many factors, and they tended to be smaller in extent. They didn’t just jump from tree to tree across an entire landscape because the trees themselves didn’t cover that landscape.
Dry forests saw frequent but less extensive fires. Moist, higher elevation fires burned less frequently, but because the trees grew more densely, they were often more severe.
Frequent fires help prevent the spread of future fires. Our First Nations learned that if you burn in the spring and the fall, it helped avoid the crazy, out of control fires that occur during the summer.
As cattle and sheep replaced bison, they ate the grasses which had helped fire to spread for so long. Fires began to become less frequent, reducing their ability to refresh portions of the forest.
In 1910, in the US, a major forest fire took place. It became known as the Big Burn, and similar to the current fires in California, it killed 87 people, extending from Washington state to western Montana. From this moment on, fires became the enemy.
Even here in Canada, fire was looked at as something to be suppressed rather than nurtured. The first Park Wardens were called Fire Wardens. Their job was to simply stop fires from blackening the landscape.
It gets even better, add logging into the mix. As the timber industry arrived in the west, the loggers took out the survivors, the huge old forest monarchs that had survived fire after fire, for hundreds of years.
They were replaced by smaller, more tightly packed fire-sensitive trees like lodgepole pines. These trees have evolved specifically to burn. In fact,t they can’t even reproduce without fire. Their cones are sealed with a hard wax that’ll only melt when the temperature reaches about 45C.
What’s important is that we took away fire, but also took away the monarchs, which allowed for a general increase in the density of trees.
A lack of fires allowed the meadows to overgrow with trees. Open stands crowded in as trees grew closer and closer together. In time, the meadows disappeared as the landscape closed in to become the dense canopy that we consider normal today.
The open canopies of the past meant fires, when they occurred, were much smaller in extent as compared to the megafires we now consider normal. When you have an open canopy and extensive meadows, the combination of spacing and topography reduces the ability of fire to spread.
Once you close the gaps, a single fire has the capacity to create a conflagration that can burn thousands of hectares. In the forests that greeted David Thompson, fires were small, patchy, and short-lived.
These now closed canopies, with trees literally touching each other, provides a mechanism for much more than fire to spread, but insects and disease. A quick visit to Jasper with it’s almost endless canopies of dead pine forests due to the mountain pine beetle brings this into quick focus.
If we look at the mountain west right now, mountain pine beetle is rapidly spreading northward. Is it an unnatural pest? Nope, it’s been here forever. It’s been controlled by forest fires and cold winters. Pine beetles prefer certain age classes of pines, in particular, middle-aged to old pines. In our fire suppressed landscape, that age class makes up the majority of our forests.
An ecosystem must have an equilibrium. When you upset that balance, the ecosystem responds. You can only prevent fire for so long before you create the tinderbox that we find around us today. Create a monoculture of similar age-classes of trees and insects will also begin to take advantage of the buffet.
Add to this fire friendly landscape, changing climates with prolonged droughts, and you have the perfect storm that has been plaguing the mountain west. Fire seasons are longer and longer each year and the fears are that, like California, fires could become a 12-month affair in some landscapes.
As the 2017 BC report highlights, we’ve added houses to the mix. Too much building has been happening on the forest-urban interface. When you take a forest that has been primed for fire, and then add a housing subdivision, you’re asking for trouble.
The challenges we see throughout the mountain west today are both predictable and inevitable.
This report is an almost perfect look at fire ecology and how to embrace the flames in order to protect homes. For British Columbia, an economy built upon the forest industry, the idea that fire is a beneficial force violates all logic.
One important thing that is often overlooked. When we hear the words “prescribed burn”, we often think that fire is fire. What’s the difference between a wildfire and a prescribed one. The simple answer is lots!
Prescribed burns never produce the dense smoke and carbon emissions caused by wildfires. As Cliff White stated in our last episode, if you burn early and burn often, the fires burn quickly, but also burn out quickly. They achieve the goal of forest regeneration and fire protection but release only a tiny fraction of the smoke and greenhouse gases released by megafires.
The longer we continue to ignore the simple fact that fire is an essential part of our forest landscape the more we find ourselves in a situation where we constantly live in fear of fires. As an example, a single lightning storm on July 7, 2017, ignited an unbelievable 160 fires. That’s just one storm! You can’t even begin to fight so many fires, all you can do is triage. Select the most critical fires and put all of your resources into those few while the others burn.
It will be some time before we have the final tally for this most recent fire season in British Columbia, but in the end, 2017 resulted in a 10-week state of emergency with more than 65,000 residents forced to evacuate. Some $568 million dollars were spent on fire suppression with another $73 million washed away with the cost of flood response.
This 2017 report was one of the first to recognize that floods and fires can be opposite sides of the same coin. Fires can create a situation where the likelihood of future flooding increases dramatically. This is one of the fears in California at the moment. After the devastating fires, there are fewer trees to absorb the rains of the El Niño currently affecting the Pacific.
Without roots to absorb the water, it flows much more quickly towards rivers creating much higher river flows and with it, the potential for floods, mudslides, and debris flows.
Sometimes this will show itself the following spring when winter snowmelt releases large amounts of water over a relatively short time. If this is complicated by high rains, the situation can be catastrophic. This is essentially what happened in Canmore in 2013. While fires weren’t a component of this flood, they might have made it even more destructive.
According to the BC report:
“Flooding and wildfires cannot be considered in isolation, and that linkages between the two events are not only possible but already happening. In 2017, for example, the Cache Creek community experienced both flood-and wildfire-related events. Or, consider the dramatic debris flow events of January 2018 in southern California which followed the devastating wildfires of December 2017. “
To complicate matters, the report states:
“The wildfire zone is not only getting closer to people, but people are getting closer to the wildfire zone. The major interface fires which occurred throughout the British Columbia Interior [in 2003] highlighted the fact that community development, home building and other human activity continues to push into these ecosystems susceptible to frequent and severe fires. This places an increasing importance on the provinces forest management decisions.”
Interface fires refer to those fires that take place on the forest-urban border. More and more, communities are building outwards, into the forested landscape, often with poorly planned rural developments that are particularly vulnerable to fire.
The report continues:
“British Columbia has the highest risk of interface fires in Canada because of its climate and topography. The risks are increasing as a result of two key factors – the continuing growth in the number of people choosing to live in or near the forests and grassland areas, and the significant buildup of forest fuels resulting from years of successful fire suppression activities. Fire experts fear that, if actions are not taken soon to reduce the risks associated with interface fires, it is only a matter of time before these fires will exceed firefighter’ ability to contain them and that this might lead to significant loss of life and property.”
Of the 2,000 or so wildfires that ignite in British Columbia each year, only a few take place in the wildland-urban interface, but as in the case of California, they are usually the most dangerous and potentially deadly.
One of the challenges of these huge megafires is that all of the forest management budget ends up being spent on suppression, with little left for planning, preparedness, management, prescribed burns, prevention, or mitigation. After BC’s terrible 2003 fire season, the Filmon report set out a detailed course of action to reduce the likelihood that it would happen again. The problem was that little was done to accomplish its goals.
In the end, the 2017 report finishes with 108 recommendations, many of them similar to the 2003 report. The record-breaking season of 2018 should only underscore the need to act decisively and to invest vast amounts of money towards planning, preparedness, and proactive fire management, including a dramatic increase in the number of prescribed burns.
On the show notes page at www.MountainNaturePodcast.com/ep069, I share a graphic that shows the comparison between wildfires in British Columbia as compared to the amount of area burned through prescribed burns.
Between the 1970s to the 1990s, BC did extensive burns. As the new millennium arrived, the area burned declined precipitously. Almost immediately the number of wildfires exploded. Returning the natural role of fire to the ecosystem must be a priority for future forest management.
Changing climates mean we simply must begin to look at our forests and forest management on an ecosystem level.
As I mentioned earlier in this episode, an ecosystem is defined as a community of plants and animals and the processes that link them to each other and to the physical environment.
Fire is one of the most essential processes in the ecosystems of the mountain west and it’s time that we embrace the burn and reduce the damage.