Climate Change Is to Blame for British Columbia’s
Wildfires, Experts Warn
B.C. is in a state of emergency and nearly 45,000
residents were forced to leave their homes.
Jackie
Marchildon
By Jackie
Marchildon
July 19,
2017
As the
blazing British Columbia wildfires continue, experts say climate change is at
least partially to blame for the devastating fires we’ve seen so far.
More than
160 wildfires are currently burning across the province, mostly in the central
and southern Interior. Nearly 45,000 people have had to leave their homes,
forcing thousands of people into evacuation centres.
But it’s
not just B.C.’s recent wildfire that is cause for concern. Devastating fires
like this, or the one that tore through Fort McMurray last year, seem to be
becoming more frequent — and more severe.
“These were
not one-offs. It is not a fluke,” Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildland fire
at the University of Alberta, told the Toronto Star back in May. “It is going
to happen again.”
John Innes,
the dean of UBC's faculty of forestry who specializes in climate change and
forest fires, among other things, says that B.C.’s intense fire was caused by
climate change as well as other weather factors.
The Pacific
Decadal Oscillation and El Niño overlapped this year and that has caused a
hotter and drier summer season, according to Innes. Climate change then adds to
that — the way fire expands depends on how warm or dry an area is and those
factors seem to be affected by climate change.
“Longer
term, we will see more fires. We will see the fire season extending, it will
start earlier, it will go on later, and the fires that we get will be more
intense,” he told CBC.
To adapt to
climate change, B.C. is planting more resilient trees in areas affected by a
mountain pine beetle infestation.
A 2014
draft report by the Wildfire Management Branch explained that the infestation
of pine beetles has intensified due to climate change. These pine beetles kill
the trees, and increase the risk of fires by providing the perfect fuel — the
report says 800,000 hectares is taken over by dead pine stands every year.
“We have to
try and make sure that our forests are as resilient as possible,” Innes said.
Natural
Resources Canada has also indicated that wildfires occurrences and behaviours
are being affected by the influences of climate change and climate variability.
The
department says that while they cannot confirm the changes in the patterns of
wildfires are directly linked to climate change, there are changes taking place
nonetheless.
Areas
burned by forest fires annually have increased over the second half of the 20th
century in the northwestern boreal regions of Canada, while the southern boreal
forest has seen a decrease. Some of this has been attributed to climate change
— increased heat and greater precipitation could be causing these changes,
according to Natural Resources Canada.
Increasing
temperatures have made forests much drier than before. In 2016, Fort McMurray
saw one of the driest springs in the area in the last 100 years.
“Proactive
infrastructure, land and resource management is required to meet the challenges
of climate change and an ever growing wildfire risk and threat to communities,
critical infrastructure and natural values in British Columbia,” according to
the the Wildfire Management Branch report.
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