What happens after the wildfire in Donnie Creek, now bigger than PEI, stops burning?

B.C.’s largest-ever recorded wildfire is now eclipsing the entire Prince Edward Island area, and experts say a commercial stampede on burnt wood could ensue after the burning ends that could further degrade the landscape.

According to the BC Wildfire Service, the Donnie Creek wildfire burns more than 5,715 square miles on July 2.

Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildfires at Thompson Rivers University, said the amount of land that has burned so far is astronomical.

According to the professor, the Donnie Creek wildfire charred enough land to stand alone as the county’s fifth-worst wildfire season of all time.

“It will burn for weeks and probably until the end of the fire season. It could even burn all winter, smoldering in deeper organic layers and then popping up,” he told CBC News.

“It’s a huge chunk and you can see from space how big this area is.”

The gigantic fire, which started long before the traditional wildfire season usually begins in BCraises concerns about the unique trees that make up the boreal forest in the northeast of the province, as well as the animals whose habitats could change irreversibly.

Flannigan said the historic wildfire season wouldn’t have been possible without human-induced climate change, as a warmer world causes more lightning strikes — leading to about half of all fires, and fires burning longer.

“The warmer it gets, the more efficient the atmosphere is at sucking up the moisture from the fuels… on the forest floor,” he said.

“Unless we see more rain to offset this drying effect… it’s easier for a fire to start, easier for a fire to spread, and it means more fuel is available to burn.”

Flannigan said that for fires as big as Donnie Creek, it’s best to let it burn out and “let Mother Nature do her thing”.

Take care of carbon stocks, animals

Kevin Smith, manager of the boreal program at Ducks Unlimited, a nonprofit environmental organization, said forests have historically evolved along with wildfires, but giant fires like Donnie Creek are changing the environment around them.

“Those shifts in patterns not only increase the amount of carbon that is emitted, but also change the vegetation that comes back,” he said. “Because the organic part of the soil burns at higher intensity in these catastrophic fires.

“What comes back after that is very different from what came before.”

Smith said the trees charred by the Donnie Creek fire — black spruce, aspen, pine and tamarack — could be replaced by other vegetation in the coming decades.

“The concern is that the boreal forest could start to shift in many areas with a much drier and warmer climate more of a grassland savanna,” he said.

Jesse Zeman, executive director of the BC Wildlife Federation, said the area where the fire burns in Donnie Creek is home to smaller fur animals, such as martens And ermine – as well as larger animals such as moose.

He said smaller animals may not have been able to escape the fire, but there may be a silver lining to the fire once it is finally extinguished.

“As long as we manage the landscape well after the fire, we hope to see a response in the moose populations in that area,” he said.

However, Zeman said he is concerned about “mountain logging” — when industries move in to find burnt wood after a wildfire has been put out, likening it to a “gold rush” mentality.

Zeman said the “obsolete” practice is due to economic considerations.

Burnt wood can be used as fuel as well as in the production of pulp and paper. But research has shown that wood decays after a forest fire reduces wood qualityso companies try to reclaim as much freshly burned wood as possible before the multi-year decay process begins.

“Salvage logging brings in a lot of roads and trails, it brings in a lot of weeds,” he said. “You don’t see forest regeneration nearly as quickly as you would by leaving those trees standing or leaving behind a more diverse landscape.”

Smith said policymakers should consider valuing areas that store large amounts of carbon, such as the boreal forest, on the same level as life and property when looking at wildfire and forest management policies in years to come.

Check the CBC News climate dashboard for live updates on wildfire smoke and active fires across the country. Set your location for air quality information and to find out how today’s temperatures compare to historical trends.