After the fire: How technology can help drive successful restoration
In the midst of Canada’s worst wildfire season in recorded history, it’s time to re-evaluate how we deal with the restoration of forest ecosystems. Megan Leslie, WWF-Canada’s president & CEO, recently delivered a keynote address at the Collision tech conference in Toronto about how Indigenous-led conservation and technology can help build resilience in the face of climate change.
One thing about me is I’m an incredible optimist, and that’s been a pretty hard position to hold on to lately. As wildfires burn across Canada, we’re watching trees and vegetation disappear. Trees and vegetation that are important habitat for wildlife and that also hold significant amounts of carbon in their roots, stems and soils.
And all of it is — literally — going up in smoke.
Why is this all happening?
Of course, we know that wildfires can be a natural part of ecosystem activity, but let me assure you that the frequency and severity of these fires is not natural. Forests are more vulnerable to fires than they once were. And it’s all connected — climate change has altered rainfall cycles and created hotter and drier conditions in some regions, while milder winters allow new invasive insects to spread, creating vast stands of dead trees that act as kindling for wildfires.
On top of that, humans have weakened forests’ resilience to fire because we’re managing them principally for yield. We are prioritizing tree species and density to maximize outputs for the forestry sector. Rows and rows of trees, like rows of corn. Trees that grow quickly for wood products. Trees being grown like an agricultural crop.
What’s missing in that picture is all the other plants: the understory, the wildflowers and shrubs, and the diversity of species. They’re not truly forests. Forests are rich, messy, complex, thriving ecosystems. In many cases we can’t see the forest for the trees because trees are all we planted. Resilience, wildlife and climate change are left out of the equation.
We have to do better than this.
So, let’s talk about what we can do to recover after these terrible fires and also prevent this magnitude of fire from happening again because it’s possible to do both at the same time!
Let me tell you about the Secwepemcùl’ecw Restoration and Stewardship Society’s efforts to reforest Elephant Hill, a nearly 200,000-hectare area of their territory near Kamloops B.C. that burned for three months during 2017. The aftermath of the fire left community members reeling. Many lost their homes, and the surrounding landscapes changed forever with widespread post-fire erosion and landslides that further threatened already damaged salmon habitat.
Instead of reforesting using the standard approach of modern forestry that prioritizes coniferous trees with higher economic value for logging, the community set their own approach grounded in their own values and Indigenous knowledge that prioritizes resiliency and biodiversity.
It meant also planting deciduous trees, which happen to be more fire resistant. It meant prioritizing planting an understory below the canopy. It also meant measuring and monitoring the carbon left in their landscapes (and how it is changing with time) so that they could validate their approach and attract new investors to support their restoration efforts.
This is where technology comes in. Historically, it’s been extremely costly and time consuming to measure and monitor carbon in nature, making it very difficult to do a proper “before-and-after” assessment and impossible to determine how carbon levels change in reaction to conservation efforts.
We needed an inexpensive and efficient approach to measuring carbon in nature that was also user-friendly. So, WWF-Canada created the Nature x Carbon Tech Challenge, a challenge to catalyze tools for nature-based climate solutions. Now, one of the final award recipients is working with the SRSS to help validate their efforts.
Innovatree Carbon Group Ltd. has developed a software that relies on LiDAR data and machine learning to calculate carbon found in forest biomass. This technology produces information that can be scaled down to the individual tree. And this level of detailed information is important because there’s a ton of variability when it comes to carbon sequestration.
Picture that messy forest again. Trees grow at different rates and even trees that are side by side may have different levels of shade and moisture. A more detailed analysis provides a greater level of accuracy and precision. It can also tell us if these trees are surviving following restoration.
Yes, there is some dark stuff happening out there, but I have hope. A lot of it. And that’s because we have solutions and opportunities. There are incredible examples out there of how technology developed for one purpose can be adapted to serve a different, yet critical, purpose for nature, wildlife and climate.
Technology is a cornerstone of conservation, helping us to scale our impact beyond our wildest dreams. Technology is making conservation better.
And as we can see in the B.C. interior, technology combined with Indigenous knowledge is changing how we can work to restore nature after these fires burn out.
Here's why Indigenous-led wildfire restoration works
As Canada faces its worst wildfire season in recorded history, the safety and well-being of many Canadian communities and forest ecosystems remain at risk. But the Secwépemcul’ecw Restoration and Stewardship Society’s (SRSS) ongoing reforestation efforts shows a path forward through Indigenous-led wildfire restoration
Since the Elephant Hill wildfire WWF-Canada has been supporting SRSS in a multi-year partnership that advances Indigenous knowledge systems and approaches to forest management. To find out more about why Indigenous-led wildfire restoration works, we spoke with SRSS CEO, Angela Kane.
What was the Elephant Hill fire like for you and other members of the Secwépemc communities?
It was actually a really traumatic time. Some of our community members lost their homes, their way of life. They rely on the land to practice their traditions and their culture — and when those fires came through, that was gone.
What are some of your ambitious goals for restoration of fire-impacted forests on Secwépemc territory?
When we first started out as a group, eight [Secwépemc] communities came together to talk about wildfire recovery and what that looked like. We identified the importance of wildfire restoration from an Indigenous perspective — that is, not putting back for economic purposes, but for ecological purposes. Too often, we see [forest] licensees or large companies putting back pine and fir for economic opportunities down the road. But what they’re not doing is putting back a forest the way it used to be — we’re looking at medicines, food sources, wildlife habitats.
How are cultural values and food security being employed as guiding principles in restoration and stewardship activities?
We’re finding that in harvesting [after] wildfires, a lot of [culturally significant] food sources, plants and medicines are being lost. Our goal is to try to restore as many cultural plants as we can, not only for now but for future generations. This is typically the area where their grandparents or elders have shown them how to forage for food and medicines for thousands of years, so it’s extremely important that we put these back because it is their way of life.
Why are community-led efforts to plant more diverse trees species, including deciduous trees, so important?
The right mixture of species, both coniferous and deciduous, plays a huge role in a healthy ecosystem. When deciduous species are in place, we find that wildfires don’t burn as hot. [Deciduous trees] are like a fire break — they help slow the fire down and, in some cases, will help stop the fire.
Can you tell us about your growing seed collection project?
One the key elements that we identified when we started our restoration work was the access to deciduous seeds. There’s not a lot of people out there collecting these seeds [so] we’re looking at creating our own program specific to the area. And a lot of times, communities will have an inventory of specific plants and medicines they traditionally use within that area. Identifying those — and actually going out and collecting before an event happens — will allow us access to seeds that we may never get access to again.
What are some of the other projects between SRSS and WWF-Canada? What’s next for SRSS?
WWF has been amazing in helping us build out our restoration projects. They’ve helped us with a carbon initiative, and [are] currently helping us to plant 250,000 trees this year and 500,000 trees next year. By 2025/26, we’re looking to plant over a million trees [annually] and ten million by 2030. That is a lofty goal, but we’ve come a long way so far, so I’m pretty confident that we can reach that or be pretty darn close to it at the end.
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