Burcum: To prevent wildfires, Canada needs our help — not just complaints from Minnesota Republicans

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Minnesota’s Sawtooth Mountains were missing in action Saturday.

During a visit to my son, who lives on the state’s North Shore, we drove up to Grand Marais for an art fair and to take in the spectacular jagged view from the breakwater near the city’s lighthouse.

But a thick blanket of wildfire smoke had enveloped the area, hiding the serrated peaks usually visible from the marine landmark. It was like looking through gauze, with the smoke obscuring even much closer vistas. We quickly realized the compromised view wasn’t the main problem.

Smoke that thick, which put us smack in the middle of the air quality index’s second-worst category, burns your nose, throat and eyes. You feel short of breath, which made the walk back to car more of a hike than the pleasant stroll it usually is.

It wasn’t the day trip I’d envisioned. At the same time, I didn’t draft a letter to Canada complaining about the smoke and poor forestry management, the recent step taken by Minnesota’s four Republican U.S. House representatives and two Wisconsin members of Congress. Instead, I became curious about what seems to be an increasing number of summer days blighted by wildfire smoke, the causes and what can be done.

Back in the office, I reached out to Minnesota experts with questions and did additional research, such as looking at Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports and watching a recent congressional hearing. It was an enlightening but frustrating exercise.

The GAO, a respected and nonpartisan source, confirms our lived experience: “The size and intensity of wildland fires have increased in recent decades, partly due to climate change, and many scientists and researchers expect fires to become larger and more severe in the future.”

As the smoke in Grand Marais illustrates, we’re all in this together. What happens in Canada can make it hard to breathe hundreds, even thousands, of miles away. At the same time, the winds blow back across the border into Canada, too.

Cooperation is essential between the two nations, as we’ll need to help each other prevent and contain fires. The congressional letter clearly missed an opportunity to forge closer ties and instead regrettably added to the tensions already simmering between the U.S. and Canada over tariffs and other issues.

“Our MN and WI reps who signed onto this letter must have already forgotten where the wind was blowing when St. Louis County was burning up this spring,” said Brian Huberty, president of the Minnesota Forestry Association, in an email he shared with me.

Huberty’s missive included an attached image of Minnesota wildfire smoke over Ontario earlier this year. “Now we have to wait for the Mayor of Thunder Bay (Ontario) to write back ... with this image as the centerpiece with his/her letter with the word ‘likewise.’”

Lee Frelich directs the University of Minnesota’s Center for Forest Ecology. He’s been tracking U.S. and Canadian wildfires and made a similar point.

“The smoke isn’t only from Canada. We’re also sending our smoke to Canada. We’re also getting smoke from fires in the United States,” Frelich said, noting that there are conflagrations in Alaska and western states.

I asked Frelich about the letter’s insinuation that Canada’s ongoing wildfires are evidence it is mismanaging its forests. His response was telling: Both countries wield similar strategies.

The challenge for Canada, he said, is that it has one of the “world’s most flammable types of forest” and millions of acres of it, generally in remote locations that are difficult to access.

The forest he’s talking about is boreal, and it’s dominated by conifers. Going without rain for even a couple of weeks is problematic. Things dry out quickly during the northern latitudes’ long hours of sunlight during the summer.

There’s also an abundance of materials, such as pine needles, that can catch fire easily. Now add in pine pitch, a naturally occurring substance that humans have long used to start or sustain fires, to this volatile mix.

Then there’s climate change, Frelich said. Spring coming early and fall coming later means there’s more time for water to evaporate, extending the fire season. Extreme warm spells also add to the risk.

“It’s an ideal situation for a very large number of overly large fires that can’t be suppressed,” Frelich said.

At a recent congressional hearing on firefighting technology, several House members argued that more logging is the solution to reducing wildfires. I asked Frelich to comment.

“It’s very context dependent,” he said.

In some local situations it might help, he explained. In other situations, it might increase fire risk because what’s left behind, such as branches and needles, is what’s most flammable. It’s not the tree trunks that are harvested and taken away.

The June 26 U.S. House hearing, which was chaired by Wisconsin House Rep. Tom Tiffany, one of the letter’s signatories, inspired hope about containing these fires as well as reason for concern.

The focus was on using technology to prevent and track fires. There are companies and nonprofits out there already doing noteworthy work, such as better mapping of high-risk areas, more quickly detecting fires once they start, tracking fires’ spread and alerting the public. It was disconcerting to hear a San Bernardino County, Calif., fire chief testify that agencies have been slow to adopt the technology widely available to consumers on their smartphones.

There was some common ground in the hearing on embracing these new methods, which was heartening. But there was little discussion on how to pay for adopting them, which needs to be remedied, especially with so-called government efficiency initiatives have targeting agencies that have fire management responsibilities or gather weather data critical for risk assessment.

There are also proposals from the Trump administration and congressional Republicans on modernizing federal officials’ fire response, a legitimate line of inquiry but one that requires further details, debate and input from experts.

All of this will require time, expertise, investment and, above all, leadership. The number of days shrouded in a smoky haze in years to come will tell us if our policymakers are merely complaining about the problem or actually doing something about it.