Lessons Burned in the Lost Creek Fire

David McIntyre, Comment

What did we learn from the Lost Creek Fire

As we cowered in fear and the flames grew higher?

What did we do to ensure that we

Were no longer the pawn in a phantom tree … plantation?

Ten years have passed since flames lit up the night sky over the Crowsnest River valley. What did we learn from our dance with destiny? Seemingly, nothing. Today, we're less than a decade away from having this same landscape—fuel loads are growing—revert to its pre-fire potential to support another, similar, conflagration.


Here in the headwaters of the Crowsnest River it's business as unusual as Alberta's rarest, most species diverse and most threatened forest continues to be targeted for piecemeal destruction by the government entrusted with its protection. Here on a landscape that's home to Canada's easternmost ponderosa pines, western white pines and western redcedars—these trees are rarer in Alberta than some of the province's designated endangered species—Alberta's rarest trees are being eradicated.

The government's management of this one-of-a-kind forest is unfathomable. Incongruously, the managers of this madness, like lost evangelists in worship of a pagan god, continue to preach a decades-old sermon that calls for more road building and clear-cut logging, practices that degrade the watershed and ignore the forest's true worth. The result: a priceless asset is being managed as if it were a haunting liability.

As public opinion polls scream out for change, Environment and Sustainable Resource Development's (ESRD) Forestry Division grabs some 2X4s and uses them to prop up a false illusion: the ability to deliver century-long protection of trees from a host of forest pathogens, and manage forests in a way that prevents wildfires.

ESRD lauds this made-in-heaven vision by presenting an alluring blend of selective science injected with incendiary and sensational diatribe. It then points a crooked and accusatory finger at the described devil: Wildfire. And how do we squelch our fear and slay the red demon? We create more and more roads and clear-cuts on a landscape already so over-roaded and logged that the existence of some species is threatened, including the three previously named trees. But will this made-in-a-vacuum solution prevent wildfires? No! Look no farther than the existence of the Lost Creek Fire as vision-defining proof of the praised model's fatal flaw.

Behind the smokescreen a mystery arises. Why is the Government of Alberta pathologically committed to an outdated forest-harvest model that is condemned by society, degrades the land's natural ability to withstand extreme rainfall events, generates extreme sediment loads in watercourses … and which appears to produce a staggering net economic loss to society as a whole?

The Lost Creek Fire has come and gone

The forest has changed and life goes on

We're the ones who gave it fuel

"Don't let it burn," our golden rule

And so for years we throttled fire

To grow a matchstick tree crop higher.

And when at last the fire broke free

We gnashed our teeth, "Oh woe is me."

Out of fear, our fears came true

But have we learned what not to do?