Chemical Forestry is one of Canada’s longest-running environmental and public-health fights – a generations-long battle against chemical herbicide spraying in public forests.
For decades, Chemical Forestry has used herbicides to kill aspen, birch, berry bushes, shrubs and other broadleaf vegetation so commercially preferred conifers can dominate. Add clearcutting, decades of fire suppression, accumulated fuels and increasingly hot, dry conditions driven by climate change, and we are creating a dangerous combination.
Glyphosate does not cause fires. And while herbicide treatment can dry or kill vegetation, that is not the biggest concern. The bigger issue is what Chemical Forestry creates over time: reduced biodiversity and increasingly uniform, conifer-dominated forests that can be more vulnerable to intense fire behaviour.
What happens when fire reaches a forest whose composition has been deliberately changed for decades?
Why Forest Composition Matters
A fire does not burn every forest the same way.
Dense, conifer-dominated stands can provide highly flammable, connected fuels. Ladder fuels can carry fire from the forest floor into the canopy, where it can become a fast-moving, high-intensity crown fire. Once fire reaches the tree crowns, it is extremely difficult and dangerous to fight directly from the ground.
Canada’s own Fire Behaviour Prediction System recognizes conifer plantations as a distinct fuel type and considers fuel composition when predicting fire spread and intensity.
Deciduous and mixedwood forests can behave very differently. Research in Canada’s boreal forest has found that fires can spread more slowly and burn with lower intensity in deciduous stands than in mixed or coniferous stands. Aspen and birch can also be less flammable during the growing season because of their wetter foliage.
So when industrial forestry suppresses naturally regenerating broadleaf vegetation to favour commercial conifers, it is changing the future forest – including what will be there to burn. 🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲
Follow the Evidence
Natural Resources Canada: Fire Weather
Government of Canada information explaining how weather and climate conditions influence wildfire risk and behaviour.
Climate does not make forest composition irrelevant
Weather helps determine when conditions are favourable for extreme fire. Vegetation, fuels and forest structure help determine how fire behaves once it encounters a landscape. Canada’s own fire prediction system incorporates fuel type.
Broadleaf trees and conifers do not behave identically in fire
Deciduous trees, shrubs, etc., under many conditions, burn less readily or severely than conifer stands – particularly during growing season. New Canadian research suggests aspen/birch cover can actually impede fire spread.
Wildfires Are Not Why This Fight Began
This fight began long before today’s wildfire crisis.
Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities have opposed Chemical Forestry for generations because of concerns about chemical exposure, public health, clean water, wildlife, biodiversity and Indigenous rights. There have been decades of resolutions, petitions, protests and formal opposition. Below is our first documented Resolution against Chemical Herbicide spraying – Sept 28, 1989
In 1999, after a two-year federal Senate study into the future of Canada’s boreal forest, the committee issued a blunt recommendation: “All herbicide and chemical pesticide use in the boreal forest should be phased out as soon as possible.” The report also devoted an entire chapter to “Aboriginal Realities,” examining Aboriginal rights, traditional land use and jurisdictional issues – recognizing that protecting the boreal forest must include respecting the people whose lives, cultures and rights are tied to it.
Quebec ended Chemical forestry in 2001 and all Provinces should have followed suit
Twenty-seven years after the federal Senate warning, spraying continues in other provinces. A major 2000 glyphosate safety review has been retracted, new scientific concerns continue to emerge, and Canadians are still told registered uses pose “no unacceptable risks.”
So who decides what level of chemical exposure to our communities, watersheds, wildlife and forests is “acceptable”?
Read more: stopthespraycanada.ca/pmra
Even if wildfire risk disappeared tomorrow, the fundamental question would remain:
WHY ARE GOVERNMENTS STILL SPRAYING CHEMICAL HERBICIDES OVER PUBLIC FORESTS AND WATERSHEDS AFTER GENERATIONS OF OPPOSITION, A FEDERAL SENATE WARNING, A MAJOR GLYPHOSATE SAFETY REVIEW RETRACTION AND MOUNTING SCIENTIFIC CONCERNS?
