What Burns First and Worst? Op-Ed for Chronicle Herald 20251023
Published Nov 1, 2025 in the Chronicle Herald, print ed., and available online in Press Reader. ”
Now that the Long Lake and Lake George fires are at last under control, and the evacuation orders have ended, it is time to ask, what do these fires have to teach us?
Wildfire is terrifying. We fight it. Of course we do. It threatens our lives, our homes, our livelihoods. We want our human efforts to keep us safe. Firefighters come from all over the country to battle the fire. People pull together to keep them housed and fed. Water bombers race back and forth, scooping water to dump on the fire.
But then the wind picks up. The fire crews must pull out. We are not in control. We couldn’t make it rain. We couldn’t make the wind drop.
That Sunday, when wind gusts drove the flames so far, so fast, evacuees could only wait to learn the fate of their homes. The fire jumped the barriers.
We grieved with the people who lost everything that day. The outpouring of support made me proud to live in rural Nova Scotia. In the end the fire was declared under control, though it still smolders underground. But the bitter truth is, we are not in control.
It is natural to respond to an experience of powerlessness by wanting more control. But we should pay attention to what these fires have to tell us.
The Long Lake fire was caused by lightening, Lake George by human activity. Both fires burned long and deep, due to the historic drought in much of Nova Scotia, but particularly in Annapolis, Kings, and Digby counties.
From the air, there’s a pattern to what burned. Comparing satellite images from before and during the fires and matching these images with information about harvests in the area, it appears that what burned first and worst were areas that had been heavily cut in recent years. Old, natural forest, on the other hand, seems to have been the least likely to burn. Fire mostly stopped when it reached unmanaged hardwood stands.
Obviously, once it is safe to do so, these preliminary observations need to be verified with on the ground study of the burned areas. Studies of wildfires in other parts of Canada do support the hypothesis that managed forest burns more readily than unmanaged forest.
Fire is a major ‘natural disturbance agent’ – killing some trees, creating openings for new ones to grow – in the boreal forest that spans northern Canada, and in the montane forests of the west. But the Wabanaki forest, the forest type native to Nova Scotia, is different. Here the major disturbance agents are wind and insect infestations.
The Wabanaki forest is unusually diverse, since we are the meeting place of the long-lived southern hardwood forests and the shorter-lived northern boreal which is mostly softwood. But industrial forestry has ‘borealized’ our forests and this has made them more likely to burn.
Forestry companies manage our forests to grow the product they favour: softwood lumber. Through spraying, thinning and planting practices, they discourage hardwoods such as aspen and maple. Unfortunately, softwoods are far more flammable than hardwoods. Think resin-filled twigs and branches down to the ground versus damp leaves and sappy trunks.
Industrially managed forests not only have fewer kinds of trees, the trees they do have tend to be young and all the same age, having grown up together after the former forest was clearcut. Crowded together, racing for the light, the lower branches die, providing fine fuels and perfect ladders for fire to climb.
And these young, managed forests are far drier than old, natural forest. If you have ever hiked across a clearcut then stepped into cool, green shade where tree tops meet above your head, you know the difference. Even in the terrible drought this year, in old forest on my land you still get a wet bum if you sit on a mossy, fallen tree trunk. Old natural forests soak up water and hold onto it. Deadwood in an old forest damps down quickly.
Forestry practices that open up forest floors to the sun and wind make forests more likely to burn. It’s not rocket science. Clearcutting is not the only way to destroy the forest canopy. Putting in extraction trails every few meters, then removing more trees from the strips left between the trails, dries out the forest floor. As a rule of thumb, taking more than a third of a forest at one time lets in too much wind and sun. It is primarily in managed forests that deadwood dries out and becomes fuel.
Much of the area affected by the Long Lake fire, and pretty much all the forest that burned in the Lake George fire, was managed forest. In the case of Lake George, satellite maps show that the 288 hectares that burned had all been heavily logged between 2015 and 2019.
The Long Lake fire spread to a much larger area – 85 square kilometers. Not all of the area within the ultimate fire perimeter burned though. Fire crews and sprinklers saved most of the houses. But also, even close to where the fire started, stands of old, mixed forest seem to have escaped. Looking at satellite images of the fire area in early October, as the hardwoods were turning colour, it was clear that many of the stands that did not burn were mostly hardwood. The yellows and oranges of their leaves really stood out amid the charcoal grey. Plantations and heavily cut areas, on the other hand, burned.
It is too early to draw hard and fast conclusions from these fires, but the forestry industry seems to have no such qualms. They are claiming that they should be allowed to ‘manage’ protected areas to reduce fire risk. The exact opposite is true. We should be protecting old forests from any forestry while managing the kinds of forestry that are done in the rest.
With climate change becoming climate catastrophe, we need to accept the gift that nature has given us: an extraordinarily diverse, resilient, fire-resistant forest. For wildlife and humans alike, we need to leave large areas of natural Wabanaki forest alone. These forests, unmanaged, will be our best allies, storing carbon, sheltering biodiversity, soaking up torrential rains, releasing clean water gradually, offering balm to our tattered spirits.
Fortunately, Nova Scotia has a legislated goal of protecting 20% of our lands and waters by 2030, and 15% by the end of next year. This is our modest contribution to the global target of protecting 30% of the planet by 2030, a target 196 countries, including Canada, signed on to in Montreal in 2023.
In addition to meeting this goal, it is time we had one of those ‘adult conversations’ our premier has said he wants, a conversation about managing the forests where logging is permitted in ways that are safer for Nova Scotians. The climate is changing. This year’s fires — and the drought that set the stage for them — have something to tell us. Business as usual is over.
Nina Newington,
Mount Hanley, NS