Tony Kryzanowski

An early fire season is upon us in many parts of Canada already, and in some regions, fire fighter shortages abound. This alone demonstrates that forest management in Canada must change. Otherwise, expect huge swaths of forests to burn every summer from now on, as well as escalating costs for fighting fires, until the Canadian forest industry becomes a mere shadow of what it once was—or could be. But there is another way. It’s time to change our paradigm and view ourselves as gardeners rather than exploiters of the forest. Year round logging that includes a significant amount of variable retention as well as commercial and pre-commercial thinning to maintain a sustainable timber supply is not only necessary, it is inevitable as Canada transitions from natural forests to natural managed forests or plantations.

Continuing to spend vast amounts of money fighting forest fires is an insanely expensive, band-aid method to conserve Canada’s forests over the long term. Where government investment needs to happen now is in re-purposing a significant portion of money budgeted for fighting forest fires to forest resilience activities. …It is unfair to expect companies to adopt these expensive practices because of the length of their forest management agreements. It makes no sense to invest in these practices if there is no guarantee that the company will eventually reap the benefits down the road. So first and foremost, governments must consider longer forest tenure and management agreements of maybe a century or longer, carefully worded so that companies cannot escape liability for poor or negligent forest management practices. …Change or die. That may sound alarmist but the consequences of climate change are upon us. Intensive forest management or ‘gardening’ is our only hope.