June 8, 2023 (EIRNS)—Not unexpectedly, the Washington Post headline, “Unprecedented’ Canadian fires intensified by record heat, climate change,” is a lie. The truth is, that the wildfires in Canada are neither unprecedented nor the result of climate change. The fires, which are now hanging smoke over large parts of their U.S. neighbor, are the result both of malign neglect, and of opposition by Greenpeace and other greens to the proper management of forests, called “prescribed burning.”

In prehistoric times, man had learned that you need to do what is now called “prescribed burning”—or the burning of the leaves, branches, and underbrush, when the weather and wind is right, before they accumulate in large amounts. That way, the burn will get rid of the flammable material without getting hot enough to set the large trees on fire.

Prescribed burning is practiced in certain parts of the U.S., but in Canada, where it was sporadically practiced, the practice has been abandoned over the last three decades. The current wildfires, now afflicting the air quality in large areas of the U.S., come as a result of Nova Scotia’s Department of Natural Resources policy: “We don’t have policies regarding [prescribed burning]. We’ve never done it in the past. We don’t plan to do it in the future.” The inevitable result of such inaction is that the ground fires set by lightning get hot enough to set the big trees on fire. Worse, under the right conditions, the crowns of the trees catch on fire, and that spreads at the speed of the wind.

The case of British Columbia makes the point. In 1986, prescribed burning was done on 78,777 hectares which kept the wildfires somewhat under control. Now there is almost no prescribed burning there any longer. Environmental Research Letters described the result in an article last year:

“The 2021 wildfires in BC set several new records. The wildfire season started a month earlier than average, following three days of record-setting temperatures reaching almost 50 degrees C. This ‘heat dome’ catalyzed a series of wildfires, including one that burned 90% of the community of Lytton, BC, resulting in the loss of two lives. The 2021 wildfire season became the third largest annual area burned in BC, with the most expensive suppression price tag of any BC wildfire season at 800 million dollars. In a disturbance cascade, these wildfires contributed to the devastating landslides and floods that inundated portions of southern BC in the fall of 2021, which have now superseded the costs of the 2016 Horse River wildfire, setting a new record for Canada’s costliest disaster.”