Canada’s forests are changing — fast. Hotter summers and drier winters, coupled with decades of fire suppression, have created conditions for wildfires to rage out of control, with cascading effects throughout the forest ecosystem.

“I’ve spent so much of the past 10 years walking ankle-deep in ash from fires that are uncharacteristically severe,” says wildlife biologist Kari Stuart-Smith. “I can stand and look for tens of kilometres and not see one living tree. It’s astonishing.”

Though climate change is moving faster than forests can adapt on their own, active management by the forest industry can help make forests more resilient to its effects and maintain critical habitat for wildlife. Human intervention in natural forest processes might seem counterintuitive, says Stuart-Smith, who is manager of biodiversity and wildlife for Canfor, but “some areas actually need active management to restore their value to wildlife.”

As an example, she points to the Rocky Mountain Trench south of Invermere, B.C. Historically, the southern portion of this broad valley, which stretches from northern Montana to just south of the B.C.-Yukon border, would have been home to open stands of large-diameter Douglas fir, western larch and ponderosa pine, but after a century and a half of cultural and wildfire suppression, historical logging and forest ingrowth, these stands are now dominated by dense, small Douglas fir trees, with minimal grass and shrubs for animals to feed on. “We’ve been going in and removing sub-canopy trees and retaining the mature, overstory trees, putting the stands back on a trajectory toward how they were historically. Ideally, this is followed by prescribed burning, which the First Nations are now starting to do again, restoring their cultural traditions and heritage.” Together, these treatments reduce ladder fuels and the risk of severe wildfire behaviour, while also enhancing habitat for many species of wildlife.

Canfor’s work is already having an impact; Stuart-Smith points to the resurgence of threatened Lewis’ woodpeckers in one restored B.C. stand. Ten years ago, the large bird with distinctive pink and green feathers was nowhere to be found in the area. “After we opened it up, taking care to retain the standing dead trees that these birds prefer to nest in, there are now 15 pairs of these birds nesting in that stand. We can say similar things about the elk and the mule deer habitat — there’s now a lot more food for them with the increased shrubs and grasses. That’s a real success story.”

Stuart-Smith acknowledges that forestry is often viewed as being at odds with biodiversity conservation, but says it’s “absolutely possible” to have a healthy forest industry and a healthy environment. “It takes some careful thinking and adaptive planning. Our current forestry practices include many stand and landscape level practices designed to maintain important habitat, such as retaining reserves around carnivore dens, moose licks, and raptor nests, protecting the areas adjacent to streams, lakes, and wetlands, providing diverse habitats by maintaining a mix of old, mid- and young stands on the landscape, and restoring roads once they are no longer needed.”