In Quebec, prevent flames with flames

In a burning forest, we expect to walk in monastic silence, punctuated by the sound of dead wood breaking under our feet. But the charred forest pulsates. Woodpeckers spend a field day, hazelnuts tweet together and other animals bask in the sun or meander gently through the ashes.

“Oh, the big serpent!” Kim Charron-Charbonneau moved. A conservation and restoration project coordinator at La Mauricie National Park, located 200 kilometers north of Montreal, avoids a long striped snake that has been slicing its way through the clearing by an inch. “You see a lot of snakes in freshly burned forests, they appreciate this more airy forest cover that lets in the sun, specify. She is also fond of, like other species, the nutrients that the fire brings. »

Fire, the friend who wishes the forest well

In Lake Modena, this small corner of the park has been reduced to ashes on an area of ​​more than 53 hectares, where black bears feed on berries that grow around their black stumps due to the flames, majestic deer scratch their wings on burnt logs and birds burrow themselves with insects that colonize the trees they emptied flames.

If in western Canada last year, as is often the case, the spectacle of wildfires, and fires in the forests of Quebec, are rare and…more appreciated. Here, fire is not an enemy to be afraid of, but a friend who wants the good of the forest, if it is well controlled. Parks Canada Parks Canada has been performing the burn operations described there for thirty-one years.

“Like water, fire must have its place in the forest, it allows it to maintain its ecological integrity,” Kim Sharon Charbonneau explains. With these fires planned, and in controlled doses, the Parks Canada team hopes to reduce the risk of uncontrolled fires by cutting the rug out from under them, and getting rid of dry wood, dead leaves, and whatever constitutes fuel in the floor. It also aims to facilitate the regeneration of some species, such as white pine or red oak, whose competitors need to burn in order to thrive in this human-sized forest.

Overexploited forest

“Mauricie Park may not be the main selling product for trips to Canada, Marc-Andre Vallett, an ecologist at Parks Canada, smiles. Its trees are not the size of the giants of the great western Canadian rainforest gazing at the tourist. “This group of enormous forests surrounding 150 lakes is nonetheless exceptional,” pleads. Even if it was necessary to wait until 1970 to protect it, Banff Park, in the Rocky Mountains, was protected from the end of the 19th century.

At first glance, it seems that this wonderful land has not been touched before. Upon closer examination, we see that the man left his mark aggressively.” continued. Evidenced by traces of ancient forest roads that have remained engraved in the inscription. “The very informative study of survey books of the nineteenth century showed that there were seven times as many pine trees before man began to exploit them on an industrial scale,” Kim Sharon Charbonneau reports.

Thousands of logs at the bottom of lakes and rivers

“And the leadership hasThey made up the forest pretty much,” She adds, referring to this dangerous art that brought life back to the region. After the snow melted, the perilous loggers ran the logs they had cut through the water, risking their lives. They had to control their buoyancy with their spear, along rivers to pulp mills. The practice was so intense that the park undertook a massive clearing project, to remove the thousands of tree trunks that had sunk, lined up and choked the bottom of lakes and rivers, in order to restore these degraded ecological environments.

Ironically, regular firefighting, which has held steady since the 1950s, has been detrimental. “Over time, we realized that it had prevented the regeneration of the ancestral essence. Without the rhythm of natural fires, the forest becomes poor and homogeneous,” Kim Sharon Charbonneau explains. “Today’s aging forest has featuresAnd the renewal rate is very different from the renewal rate more than two hundred years ago. Many species have become rare. White pine, for example, is stifled by balsam fir, which reproduces, even in the shade, “ She completes.

Pamper the white pine

So the garden agents come to light a fire, to pamper the white pine, to help it regain its place as in the forest of yesteryear, before the hand of man comes to weaken it. Of the 536 square kilometers of the park, approximately 4% were the scene of the described burns.

Philip Moisan-Gaudet is a volunteer firefighter and arsonist. “I have my head on fire a little bit all the time”, He smiled sarcastically, the garden fire officer, expert in these burns. “People imagine that we are leaving with our match and that we are waiting to see what happens. But we prepare it very meticulously, sometimes up to two years in advance,” Identifies. Everything must be calibrated: surveying the ocean using natural fires, such as rivers or wetlands, accurately analyzing the slopes of the land, evaluating the volume of dry wood on the ground, etc.

spark art

When the planets finally lined up, and the winds were favorable, Phillip, Kim, and the others took off. “Morning of the burning, there is excitement in the air, even if we measure all the work done,” Philip Moisan-Gaudet, man of the first spark witnessesAnd the It is operated either with a manual stove, a type of irrigation that can be filled with fuel, or thanks to the red dragon who, from a helicopter, throws balls of potassium permanganate. “When these balls fall to the ground, these balls cause a chemical reaction and slowly catch fire, The firefighting expert explains. With the wind, the fire will move on its own. » But under close atmospheric control. “If we don’t set our eyes on it, and the next day we’ll be back to patrol, and presto, 50 hectares could disappear. A brand could reach tens of meters on the ground and set fire to somewhere else,” afraid. Everyone remembers using tank planes at their maximum to put out a fire that spread over several hectares in Lac Anticajamak, a remote spot in the park, about twenty years ago.

In an ancient district that burned down more than twenty-five years ago, where there were only 1,000 pines per hectare, more than 14,000 are now counted among trees of oak, maple, white fir and yellow birch. “It’s like hitting the ‘reset’ button in the woods. To live well, you have to be warm! Sometimes we get criticized, we get criticized because we play Mother Nature, but we just want to help the forest,” Philip Moisan-Gaudet justifies. “We try to respect the mosaic of the forest, that is, this mixture of forests of all ages, young and old, which presents the species with the full range of their needs. Otherwise the Low biodiversity “,” He laments.

1970. Creation of La Mauricie National Park. Three years later, its exploitation remains intense: 40% of the wood is still transported to paper mills thanks to the log drive, According to Radio Canada.

1973. Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba experiences the first described burn. Since then, 21 Canadian national parks have practiced controlled fires. It started from Mauricie in 1991.

2017. Fires ravage western Canada and New Zealand, and Mexican firefighters help put out the flames.

2021. Over 800,000 hectares of forest are burning in British Columbia.