Numerous social media users are misleadingly claiming firefighters are actually escalating the more than 400 wildfires raging in British Columbia, after sharing a viral video of a helicopter spraying flammable liquid. But one video … sparked conspiracy theories these Canadian forest fires have nothing to do with climate change but have rather been purposefully started by firefighting helicopters. The clip shows a helicopter flying above a forest filled with smoke, as a torch suspended from the chopper emits flames. The next shot shows a large area of the land on fire. The footage … from June 2023 and was posted on Youtube by British Columbia’s Wildfire Service. …As counterintuitive as it may seem, it’s actually possible to fight fire with fire — it’s called a controlled burn. Due to the fact, there’s no way to spray enough water to put the wildfire out entirely, firefighters need to create a firebreak.
…Colonisation and the logging industry have transformed Canada’s forests, bringing an end to indigenous land management practices and replacing biologically diverse landscapes adapted to wildfire with human-created monocrops that are at much higher risk of burning. …Indigenous people were stripped of their land and moved on to reservations, but they also had their burning practices outlawed by Canadian governments which saw them as dangerous. An even bigger impact came with the advent of logging. Ancient virgin forests that had evolved both alongside and to resist fires were logged and then replaced with monocrops of valuable timber trees. …“It’s really all about the weather. That’s the reason why we’ve got this incredible fire season,” Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildfire fire at Thompson Rivers University …“We can’t control the weather,” said Robert Gray, a fire ecologist at the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions. “The only thing that we can control is the fuel.”
NORFOLK COUNTY
Labrador Tea, fireweed, chokecherry and raspberry are some of the boreal plants that are classified as weeds by the Canadian Weed Science Society. These plants are targeted with herbicide by logging companies across the Canadian boreal forest. However, these boreal plant species are important traditional plants for many Indigenous peoples in Canada and around the world. In addition to their use as food, these traditional native plants hold tremendous medicinal, ceremonial and material value. These plant species thrived before the arrival of Europeans and are respected and cared for by Indigenous communities, in ways that help increase biocultural diversity. As a cultural and environmental anthropologist, I have been working for and with First Nations communities in the boreal forests in Alberta since 2006. In my recently published paper, I reveal how the misappropriation of these plants from traditional territories is grounded in a colonial bias for the economic value of plants.
VICTORIA – The Forest Practices Board has released an investigative report about the management of habitat for species at risk under the Forest and Range Practices Act (FRPA). The report examines the BC government’s use of tools available under FRPA to protect habitat for species at risk and forest licensees’ compliance with legal requirements. In this investigation, the Board looked at a sample of areas where legal measures are in place for habitat protection and found that operational-level forest planning and practices were consistent with those legal requirements. “Where government sets clear, legal objectives, licensees comply,” said Bruce Larson, vice chair of the Forest Practices Board. “However, the legal tools available to government aren’t always being used, and we found a lack of transparency in how government makes decisions about balancing timber supply and habitat protection.” Additionally, the Board found that the process of listing species to enable the use of FRPA tools is slow and cumbersome, and has not kept pace with the current risk status of species in BC.
CHARLOTTETOWN, Prince Edward Island
BRUNSWICK, Georgia — Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the USDA’s Forest Service is making $150 million from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act available to help underserved and small acreage forest landowners connect to emerging voluntary climate markets. These markets can provide economic opportunities for landowners and incentivize improved forest health and management. Secretary Vilsack announced the funding opportunity at the Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention Conference on the heels of the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act. …Eligible entities include Tribal governments and organizations, states, local governments, public and private non-profits, and for-profit entities. See the 
MONTANA — It is not unusual to hear people complaining bitterly about road closures on public lands. A certain amount of resentment is natural, when you encounter a gate or barrier blocking motorized access to what looks like a perfectly good road. What gives? Actually, road closures are not the result of a nefarious plot by evil people who want to take away our freedoms. The Kootenai Forest Stakeholders Collaborative (KFSC) wants the public to be aware that there are some solid reasons why not all forest roads are open to motor vehicles. Many years of research confirm that roads can be hard on wildlife, especially on a number of species that tend to avoid areas with open roads. …Although we also hear complaints that more roads are being closed every year, in fact the miles and percentages of open and closed roads has not changed substantially for several decades. 
These “beetles” are tiny insects that burrow under the bark of mature needle-bearing trees (conifers) and munch on the nutrient layers. In time, they suffocate entire forests and create immense debris fields. Those tiny bugs provide much of the dead wood fueling today’s conflagrations. According to University of British Columbia researchers, the mountain pine beetle damaged 45 million acres of pine forests across western Canada and the northwest United States in the last 40 years. Jeffrey Hicke, a University of Idaho scientist, calculated by the time the enormity of the beetle outbreak came to the forefront in 2012, the creepy-crawler outbreaks affected 30 million acres and killed 6 billion trees. Throughout North America, forests are experiencing some of the worst wildfires in recent history. Correspondingly, insect and disease epidemics starting 40 years ago were the worst ever. Beetle-killed trees only waited for the right conditions to ignite.
