Parks Canada says that “economics” is the reason behind the burning of felled trees as part of the FireSmart-ForestWise program, after a Jasper resident asked why they’re not used as firewood.

Anyone who has been out to Lake Edith and Lake Annette would have seen the piles of timber that are waiting to be torched. According to Parks Canada’s Alan Westhaver, project manager for FireSmart-ForestWise program, part of the project involves piling the removed timber and burning the piles in place. “We’re at the end of our burning period,” he said. “We probably burned upwards of 6,000 piles this winter.”

The cleanup work that is now being done involves mixing the ash back into the mineral soil, shortening stumps, cleaning up excess surface debris and taking down flagging, said Westhaver. Piles that remain will be burned next winter once the ground has frozen.

Westhaver said the reason Parks doesn’t sell the wood is mainly due to the economics of the situation. “In past years we have and that’s by far and away our desired way of operating,” he said. “Both economically, that’s value that helps offset the cost of the work,” he said. “Also, it reduces the amount of burning and smoke and those kinds of things... not that burning is bad, it does recycle the nutrients back into the forest where they belong.”

The issue today “is that there is almost no timber industry,” said Westhaver. “There is no one that is interested in buying logs... there’s no market for the small diameter wood for making pulp or paper. The Douglas fir, which theoretically is very valuable wood, there’s no market for it, period.” Last year, the timber was hauled to Salmon Arm, BC for processing, but the mill used shut down in February of this year, he said.

The only thing Parks could do this year was process firewood. “We processed and created about 1,300 cords of firewood, which is a lot and sold more than half of that to the park, to Jasper, for our summer firewood supply,” said Westhaver. There was very little demand from local residents with only about 15 people purchasing firewood from the project, he said.

As well, Westhaver said, there’s an advantage to leaving some of the piles. Timber that has been marked with orange spray paint will serve as bait piles for the Douglas fir beetle. The beetles are more likely to attack the piles than upright live trees, said Westhaver, adding that they’ve had “good success” with the baiting strategy on the Bench last year. The idea is that the beetles invade the dead tree and then when burning commences next winter, the population will be significantly reduced or eradicated.

The fire protection objectives of the project overlap with the ecological goals of the project, said Westhaver, which centre around getting fire back on the landscape and returning the forest to a more natural state. The human-use areas are the priority for cleanup, said Westhaver, joking that while thinning, the crews unearthed a few picnic tables that he didn’t even know existed. Even though aesthetics are not the primary objective for the project, they are important for gaining acceptance from the local population, Westhaver said.

It doesn’t take long for a recently thinned forest to appear untouched by man. After the first year of thinning up on the bench, “there was a four-fold increase in the grasses and the flowering plants and a noticeable decrease in the moss,” said Westhaver, which is “creating habitat for a whole different group of species.”

Longer-term success is visible along the Lake Edith cottage road. The forest is much more open and “you can see how the mosses have pretty well burned off, the grasses have pretty well taken over,” said Westhaver. There are species of plants native to the prairies, such as wild onion, that have been hanging in here waiting for the right conditions to flourish, he said.

Not only has the FireSmart-ForestWise project brought tangible benefits to Jasper, but hundreds of land managers from around the world have come to the park to see how the program is dealing with the public, how we’re engaging in this project with low environmental impacts, how we’re building in wildlife habitat features, improving forest health, and protecting the town from uncontrollable wildfire disasters, said Westhaver. “Now we’re set up for success,” he said.