A big fire can really hurt animal populations if they are spring time ones.
Nesting birds/birthing mammals.

Worst country to pack out moose quarters is in a 10-15 year old burn.

The Gatlinburg fire was an example of what happens when our forests do not burn regularly.

Oh and an interesting factoid.

Our native longleaf forests are long lived climax forests living four to five hundred years for the individual tree yet they would burn every two to five years.

I was talking about fires in typical "marten bush"-type boreal mixed forests (this is what we call "taiga" here), which are similar across the globe and are made up of mixture of several conifer species, such as spruce, fir, five- and two-needle pines, tamarack, and deciduous trees such as aspen and birch, with the bottom layer composed of several species of feather and string moss and dwarf shrubs (mostly of the heaths family). Such forests gradually accumulate a thick layer of slowly decomposing organic matter, up to a few feet deep, which contains most of the trees' root systems, so a fire will kill most trees if the litter is completely dry. Fires in such forests are high-impact and it takes up to 250 years for the climax community to reestablish. The limiting factor has always been the nature of these fires - since they usually occur in the end of a dry spell, when enough humidity accumulates in the air, the dry thunderstorms that spark them usually turn into good rains within a week or two, so only a limited patch burns out. Our taiga is a patchwork of such burnt areas of different age.

It IS different in some types of boreal forests.

The Scots pine (a two-needle pine), which is one of the key tree species of the boreal zone of the Northern Hemisphere, and the #1 source of construction lumber, has a root system and bark adapted to low-intensity fires. It prefers poor, well-drained sandy soils where many other trees fail to establish, but eventually appear as undergrowth, and regular fires kill off all deciduous undergrowth as well as other conifers, including five-needle pines which have flat, superficial root systems. The Scots Pine benefits from such fires because they create well-spaced, "park-type" mature forests with just a thin layer of lichens or moss over the mineral layer, and kill off deciduous trees and spruce that create shade, which in turns raises the humidity of the soil and the number of pathogenic fungi dangerous to pines, such as Heterobasidion rot. Most importantly, fires mineralize all organic matter in pine forests, allowing all excessive nitrogen to wash out and limiting the competition from nitrogen-loving plants that need organics. Being much drier, such forests burn more often and benefit from fires every few decades. There is actually a big controlled fire program in Sweden, aimed at reestablishing such forests where there are now mixed forests. But even with all the efforts, such stable fire-resistant forests are declining. Here is an example of what a really good fire-resistant pine forest looks like, just a couple of years after a fire.






Low-intensity fires are also relatively easy to stop in these good pine forests. Oftentimes a furrow made by a tractor or manually is enough. Spray packs work well, too.
With good mature taiga forests, only rain helps. In my experience, there is very little use in the work of firefighting teams when it comes to taiga fires far away from the road network, and Be-200 flying boats are mostly used to protect critical infrastructure locally (when they are available, and they're usually elsewhere, protecting certain people's villas in the Mediterranean). This is us watching our second camp burn down, after several days of trying to stop the fire. We spent another week sitting in the middle of a mire, waiting for the helicopter to pick us up





However, here, even Scots pine forests have been suffering lately from overly frequent fires, both natural and caused by humans, combined with irrational logging regulations. For instance, a few years ago you could buy a hectare of freshly burnt pine forest (and probably still can, I haven't checked), with plenty of trees that would eventually recover, for the price of an ice cream, something like $1, so naturally, no one would let such forests recover naturally, leading to catastrophic losses of old-stand pine forests all over Siberia. Ironically, most of it was exported to China and probably ended up in the U.S., because you guys are key importers of processed lumber from China. Because of this, in some areas, especially adjacent to China (Irkutsk region, Buryatia etc.) arson is common. There may be a lot of money in the whole firefighting thing, but there is WAY more money in logging, especially now that our country, which is a key exporter of timber, has been trying to limit exports of unprocessed timber. So those with a fondness for conspiracy theories might want to look into how the timber market has been changing in the past few years.

Larch/tamarack forests are also quite fire-resistant but excessive burns kill them off, too, and larch takes much longer to regenerate, so these forests are even more vulnerable to the erosion issue that I mentioned. Nevertheless, freshly burnt (up to 15 years) larch forest in Eastern Siberia is prime sable habitat.

We also have fire-resistant birch forests here in Southern Siberia, with peculiar herbaceous communities, but they are more of a curiosity.

Remember that Alberta sold off it's government Fire Fighting Services to private, lock stock and barrel and a year later had the worst season going and paid 10X the going rate for planes . choppers, man power. Manitoba sent their water bombers and came home with a 10 million dollar surplus. Surprised it did not come up much in this last election, Except the fact that they could not find any personnel to help fight. Manitoba conservatives did the same sell off of all their equipment so we are going to take it bad when the time comes,

on another note; one of our hunting partners has a chopper service and when they finished filming the movie "Chicago Rose" they flew the chopper right up and was pressed into service during a bad season we had here, they found out how good it was to get a crew and gear in with one trip, much like Tatiana UN chopper. Three weeks into he had paid the chopper of.
The use IR and cross check all the lightning strikes for two days

Thanks all. I've been busy as a one legged man at a (This word is unacceptable on Trapperman) kicking competition. Helping neighbors wetting down their hay and straw bales. Setting up sprinklers around my farm and cabin. Then got 3 dozers mobilized from the outfit I work for. Heading out on one of those dozers today. All out air assets are stretched very thin and none available at this time.

As Tatiana has said my bush is much the same as was described. Aspen,alder,spruce, pine, willow and Tamarack. With a mix of muskeg, peat loamy soil as well as grassland type of soil. They way the smoke is going straight up I suspect is a sign of a hot fire. Rain in the forecast thankfully but before that we've got a 30 deg C day or 2. We've been fortunate that the wind is blowing the fire away from our line but that'll change.

Thanks again for your insight and experience

Stay safe on that fire line

Thanks jingles. Cut 2 miles of fire line today with 7 D6's. I struck out with my guys (3 d6) heading to the border to clear line so crews and heggelund can get in. I've got 20 years on a dozer but never forest fire work. It's been a long time since we could crash and stack trees. Anything over 6" goes to the mill these days but it felt good to be out there tipping over some of those big trees. Wind changes tomorrow and won't be in my favour but we're doing our best. Some aircraft would help. Hand fallers came and cleaned up the standing fuel around the cabin.

The plus side is there's some easier access to the line but the down fall is there's easier access to the line.

Take care.

I've seen coyotes move back in to fires as soon as they quit burning. Lots of dead mice and stuff.

With sniffy and his crew wanting us to go to electric cars to control global warming, why don't he call trustdo and tell him to stop all the fires so we don't get global warming

Was perfect comditions for fires to become beast with that last weather.
When you see lightning in the smoke cloud you know you have a beast growing.
It is those 60,000 foot clouds that are putting the smoke into the jet stream to have fall down 1/2 the world away
One of your Alberta fires grew from 5 ha to 50,000 ha in 36 hours , hope that is not the one effecting you.

NWalta does your fire have a code name we can look up and follow ?

on a return of marten experience; two of the areas I trap had fires 35 years before and it took 30 years for them to return in a aspen /parkland setting and a jack pine ridge habitat

I hope everyone stays safe, one thing guys from down south have to remember is the short growing season up there so the forests don’t have the amount of time to regrow there in a year that they do in the southern USA.

Its not about regrowing down here. Historically and even to this day crown fires just are not a thing here. Our fire regimen is ground fires sweeping through every few years knocking back hardwood growth and favoring fire adapted pines, longleaf and shortleaf. The big stand replacement events for us are hurricanes and to a lesser degree tornadoes.

I'm unsure of code# but on the bc fire app it is the peavine creek fire. Today it was fairly subdued. I don't know how many of miles of line we cut today but we went up the border then crossed into bc. We skirted some spot fires and headed back south cutting line. We will end up at beaverlodge lake tomorrow late morning early or early afternoon. I'll try to send a link. This is a relatively small fire compared to some of them that are burning. Because our provincial wildfire guys are tapped the county of grande prairie is running the show and I must say that I'm very impressed with the organization and way things are being done. Guys working hard on the dozers gettin 'er done. It is a bad time when crashing trees all the fluff from the poplar trees and willows plugging up the rads.

I'm not so good with the googler or confuser so I hope this works.
https://www.bcfiremap.com/

The fire is in the purple area straight west of Grande Prairie there's a fire symbol in that mess lol that give info on fire.

Was able to get to the Alberta fire pages and view that fire size.
May Mother Nature give you a bath is in the best interest
Good luck on the line....I did see some jumpers from Boise Idaho are up there helping

only been in that area once when you had a Alberta Trappers convention up there, most people travelling the Alaska Highway pass through that area
Best of luck on the line

Thanks N of 50. Think they had the rendezvous in teepee creek. Yes the tourist drive right thru our little town. Not much to see in ol luggage stop alberta but I like it. Forecast has changed to thunderstorms. Not good. Bc forest service was planning a back burn today but conditions changed and they gonna plan for tomorrow morning. Hope it doesn't turn into a snafu. Got half a day with the cats then we'll get a rest maybe. Lol. Some low life's broke into the other cat crews trucks while they were working on the line. A winch cable around the neck and drug down the line would be a problem solved.

Just a update on the fire. The evacuation alert has been canceled for my area due to a steady amount of precipitation. The north and south cat guards are completed. Both crews averaged about a mile a day. The one crew had 4 D6T dozers and built their guard 4-5 dozers wide. My crew had 2 D6T' and a D6N. We built ours 2-3 dozers wide with a couple 100'x100' helo pads. That's not bad for both crews considering we both got pulled off the line multiple times due to the fire getting real aggressive and plans for a back burn. The travel to our staging area took min 1hr each way to get to our staging area and back out to the line. Some times this would happen twice in a day.

Yesterday was a exciting day. The Bc crews bunch the wood,,strip and then put the bunched woodon top of the strippings. It was a near disaster when their row on bunched wood caught on fire and burnt down the line like someone left a trail of gas and then sparked it up. All is good and they managed to get it under control but it was iffy at the time.

Anyone driving past should really stop into Trapper Gords treading post off the Alaska highway.

Hopefully thing settle down with those fires.
The weather system is putting all the smoke in a back curl over us to the Ontario boarder much like the east coast got last week

Correct