Eating Leaves and Preventing Forest Fires

Last week was another eventful week!

On Tuesday, I found out what my wild side is! You can discover your wild side by clicking on the “WILD” side of the words “WORK WILD” on the top of any page of this website.

Meet Annaximus:

According to the Wild Side Generator, I, Annaximus would make a good electrician or hydrologist in a forestry mill because of my hands-on approach to problem solving. Apparently I’m also a herbivore. I suspect my meal of choice would be the aspen tree!

Speaking of aspen trees, when I was driving to Slave Lake on Wednesday, I saw a bunch of aspen trees (along with pine and spruce trees) that were burned in the Slave Lake forest fire last year. As you may already know, the fire forced all of the town’s 7,000 residents to evacuate—the largest displacement in Alberta’s history! Roughly one third of the Town of Slave Lake was destroyed, leaving 732 people without homes. Sixteen months later, homes and other buildings are still being rebuilt.

Did you know that without human intervention, forests will naturally burn roughly every 50 years? When forests get old they become dry and more prone to burning. Also, the taller the trees in a forest, the more likely they are to be hit by lightning and catch fire. Wildfires are both dangerous (to people, animals, and buildings) and also wasteful. Through responsible forest management, wildfires can be prevented by gradually harvesting ageing trees. And harvested wood is certainly more useful than burnt wood!

In Alberta, foresters create 200 year Forest Management Plans which determine how many trees can be cut each year so that we leave more than 99% of our trees in the forest. For every tree that is harvested, at least two new trees are planted in its place. These plans help protect people, animals, and buildings from fires (as the older trees get removed) while also ensuring that our forests are sustainable resources that will keep growing back well before we use them up.