“We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air, the quality of which is dangerous, and totally unacceptable!” Trump wrote on social media last week.
“This is Willful Negligence, and becoming a yearly occurrence, costing the United States Billions of Dollars, which cost of this pollution must of necessity be added to the TARIFFS Canada is currently paying,” he added.
He’s not the only U.S. official to make such statements: Last week, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) announced legislation to sanction Canada over the fires.
“Thanks to Canada’s failed leadership, Ohio’s skies are seeing the worst pollution on record and Ohioans across the state are being subjected to hazardous conditions – we will not tolerate this incompetence,” Moreno said in a written statement. “My bill will declare an emergency, sanction all Canadian officials responsible, and study a victims compensation fund driven by imposing additional tariffs.”
Canadian leaders have pushed back.
Meanwhile, wildfire experts from both sides of the border said this week that Canada’s forest management practices are not to blame, and that in reality, climate change is driving conditions that make wildfires more frequent and intense.
Experts described many of the fires as being in a remote, difficult-to-access part of Canada, meaning they go unmanaged but added that’s not abnormal.
“Most of these forests are in really remote locations. There’s no roads within many miles of these fires, and there’s no practical way that you could have enough boots on the ground and enough of a financial commitment to doing management to make any kind of a real difference,” said Chris Field, director of Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment.
Mike Flannigan, professor of wildland fire at Canada’s Thompson Rivers University, agreed that it wouldn’t work to simply “rake” the forest floor, because you’d have to clear all of the vegetation for that to be effective.
“You’d have to remove all organic material,” Flannigan said, adding that fire “will spread as long as there’s organic material to burn,” even if it’s just grass.
“You’re not going to stop fires unless you completely bulldoze the area, and that’s enormous,” he added. “You can do it on a very localized area of high value … and with prescribed burning, you can thin the forest, you can remove material, but fires still occur in those areas, but they’re lower intensity, so fire management can put them out.”
The experts said that climate change is making wildfires more intense.
“Warmer conditions lead to drier fuels,” Field said. “The warmer it is, the faster things dry, and the drier they are, the faster they burn.”
Read more at TheHill.com.
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