Wild Fires in Fort Mc Murray should make us thankful for logging in our foothills. While there are some people who will never accept logging as harvesting a crop, a crop with a normal life cycle, the fact of life is that fires are a natural event that clears out the forest on a measurable average time frame.
The destruction caused by a fire is many times higher if that fire runs through an older mature forest than a younger healthier forest. Why? It is simply a matter of the amount of fuel per hectare or acre. The more fuel the more intense the fire can become and the harder it is to put out. Even if the points made by some environmentalists about the concerns of erosion after logging were factual, which go against the science forest practices are based on, the erosion that would occur after a hot fire in a mature forest would be many times higher than a controlled method developed to minimize the concerns of erosion as practiced by modern forest harvesting processes.
I've seen the forest floor after a hot fire like the one ravaging Fort Mc Murray and there was nothing left, it was down to rock or clay and with the inevitable erosion and lack of organics to create soil the full natural regrowth after such a fire can take centuries if not helped by man. There is a difference with the Fort McMurray fire though; the forest floor is comprised of a lot of muskeg, which is not the case for most of our mature forests in the foothills.
Things may regrow naturally quicker because of the swampy nature near Fort McMurray than in our foothills. But the fact is that here logging is far less destructible than fire and without logging mature forests the risk of a destructible fire is many times higher. Insurance rates translated into the risk of losing your house, I predict will go much higher in the future if you live close to a mature forest, one that isn't harvested on a sustainable cycle.
As far into the future as we can see we will need housing made with wooden components and we will need the forests for us to be able to live as we do and we will need to continue to harvest forests in sustainable ways. In my opinion those that disagree probably are not facing their hypocrisy. Is it too much to hope for that someday soon most people will realize how beneficial logging actually is in so many different ways?
Lloyd Beckedorf
