Indigenous-led reforestation reduces future fire-season threats
The central interior of B.C. has always experienced wildfire, but what was once a relatively rare part of natural renewal has become more frequent and much more intense. Wildfire records have been set ablaze with four of the five worst fire seasons in recorded history happening since 2017.
Clearly, these forests are not as resistant to fires as they used to be.
The climate crisis has created a domino effect of consequences that worsen wildfires. Warming temperatures over the past two decades have enabled pine beetles to survive winter and kill standing trees, creating flammable areas full of dead wood.
The lower snowpack means less snowmelt, which reduces water flows and moisture for soil and vegetation. Climate change has also affected rain cycles, plunging the interior in an ongoing drought.
Colonialism has also played a role by banning First Nations stewardship practices, such as prescribed or cultural burning. Used deliberately for millennia to manage wildfire risk, these carefully controlled fires reduce forest understory, which acts as fuel, in addition to eliminating disease, creating natural fire breaks and enhancing habitat.
How, then, do we recover from and combat wildfires in the long run??
For the Secwepemcúl’ecw Restoration and Stewardship Society (SRSS), one way is to bring back a more balanced ecosystem for people and wildlife through Indigenous-led reforestation. SRSS is a collaboration between several Secwépemc communities formed in 2017 after wildfires blazed through 192,725 hectares of Secwépemc traditional territory.
To them, reforestation isn’t merely planting trees — it’s using traditional practices to restore a balanced, complex ecosystem that benefits communities and wildlife, not just industry. Here’s how they’re doing it.
Prioritizing plant diversity?
Reforestation efforts that focus on commercially valuable trees weaken forest resilience to fire. Having a good mix of trees and shrubs helps create moister habitats, hydrating plants and decreasing dry conditions.
Wildfires mostly devastated monoculture forests managed for commercial logging. SRSS is planting coniferous and deciduous trees, and other native plants to create mixed canopies that help capture moisture, lowering the risk of wildfires and the intensity of existing fires.
Better suited to the local ecology, native and adapted species provide food and shelter for culturally important wildlife while providing First Nations communities with better access to traditional foods and medicines like soopolallie (buffalo berry), wild onions and wild strawberries.
Indigenous knowledge leads the way
The goal is to recover from fire in a way that adheres to Secwépemc values and laws. “It is our cultural responsibility,” says SRSS on their website, “to ensure we leave a legacy of regenerated lands, enriched and thriving forests and biodiversity, healthy and abundant wildlife, clean air and water for future generations.”?
Guided by Indigenous knowledge combined with scientific data, SRSS has been restoring culturally important and at-risk species and habitat.
Since 2020, they have planted more than 1.1 million trees with the financial support of WWF-Canada and our funding partners, restoring more than 677 hectares of forest ecosystems impacted by wildfires. Their goal is to plant one million trees annually by 2026.
‘Nature is issuing a distress call’: WWF’s latest Living Planet Report shows dramatic species population decline
It’s not good news: According to WWF ’s latest Living Planet Report (LPR) 2024, published last month, there has been a 73 per cent decline in the average size of monitored wildlife populations globally in just 50 years (1970–2020). Habitat degradation and loss is the most reported threat in each region.
So what does a report like this tell us? Declines in wildlife populations can be early warning signs of increasing extinction risk and the potential loss of healthy ecosystems. When ecosystems are damaged, they can’t provide humanity with the benefits we have come to depend on — clean air, water and healthy soils — and they can become more vulnerable to tipping points, resulting in substantial and potentially irreversible change.
“Nature is issuing a distress call,” said , Director General of WWF International, in a statement following the report’s publication. “The catastrophic consequences of losing some of our most precious ecosystems, like the Amazon rainforest and coral reefs, would be felt by people and nature around the world.”
The report arrived in the wake of global climate-change-fuelled events — including the worst wildfire seasons Canada has ever seen — and just before the international community arrived in Cali, Colombia for the UN’s COP16 biodiversity summit in late October.
“The LPR came at a pivotal time, as world leaders gathered at CBD COP16 to update their progress and plans for reaching the goals of the Global Biodiversity Framework, signed in Montreal in 2022, to protect and restore a third of the planet,” says Megan Leslie, WWF-Canada’s President and CEO. “The findings of the LPR are a reminder that we must take urgent action to halt and even better, reverse, biodiversity loss before it’s too late.”
For more on this year’s Living Planet Report click here.
Getting to the root of primary forests
Covering a third of the land in Canada and housing tens of thousands of plant, animal and fungal species, our forests purify air and water, provide jobs, food and fuel, and help stabilize the global climate by sequestering carbon. But human activities (logging, oil and gas, mining, agriculture, roads, etc.) and climate change (increased droughts and fires, pest outbreaks, etc.) are affecting their ability to do this work.
And while trees can grow back, the forest won’t necessarily be the same after these impacts. That’s where primary forests come in — but despite being some of the world’s most ecologically significant forests, human activities are encroaching on them. So, to better understand primary forests, including what and where they are and which ones are worth protecting, we spoke to Karen Saunders, MES, R.P.F. , WWF-Canada’s Vice-President, Wildlife and Industry.
First off, what are primary forests?
Definitions vary, but primary forests are forests that have not been majorly impacted by human activities. They are naturally generated (i.e., not planted by humans) and are composed of native species. Forests that have regrown after a major human-caused disturbance — like logging, which can impact a forest’s structure and species — are not considered primary.
Of course, these are over-simplifications.
What’s wrong with a simple definition?
Without a definition that addresses details, it’s difficult to identify primary forests and put them on a map, which is what’s needed to implement policies like logging limits and protected areas. And it also ignores nuances like Indigenous usage (food, medicine, forest products, cultural uses) and stewardship, neither of which should disqualify a forest from a primary classification if natural processes have not been disrupted.
What is WWF-Canada doing about this?
We have completed a review of the existing literature and criteria so we can start a dialogue around the variations in definitions and work towards a widely accepted, comprehensive definition.
We are also working with the University of Maryland’s Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD) lab to produce a prototype map of long-lived forests in Canada (which may or may not be old enough to be classified as “old-growth”) that have not been completely cleared and regrown in recent history.?
?And we’re seeking feedback from Indigenous organizations, researchers, corporate partners, government agencies and environmental NGOs on the mapping method, scope and limitations, and potential usage. Our goal is to create a tool that supports forest conservation decision-making, including sustainable forest-product sourcing, land use planning and Indigenous-led forest management.
GLAD lab’s mapping method has been previously used for primary tropical forests, but not yet for temperate and boreal ones. So this is also a stepping stone to the eventual mapping of primary temperate and boreal forests around the globe.
Okay, so what’s next?
This work will bring us a step closer to a clearer definition of primary forests in Canada and a robust mapping methodology for primary temperate and boreal forests. Then we use this data to help conserve specific primary forests outside of existing protected areas and support the plants and animals within them. With Canada committing to protect 30 per cent of its lands by 2030 to halt and reverse nature loss, this would help us get there in the most impactful way possible.
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