Absolutely. When I go around and speak, one of my comments is that we can certainly learn from the past and what we did, but we can't depend on that for the future because our ecosystems are changing.
In British Columbia, we have fantastic researchers, who have leaped ahead because we now have climate-based seed guidelines that look at the projections about where the climates are changing, how they're changing and where those seed sources should be changing along with them, to make sure that what we're planting comes from a seed source that is a resilient forest for that new climate.
We're also in the throes of creating climate-based seedling selection standards along the same lines. As you said, there are some areas that are going to get drier, hotter and shorter winters. The historical lodgepole pine may not be the best species to put there.
Having said that, British Columbia is a large land base and there is still a significant land base that we'll never be able to plant fast enough. Just because you plant, that doesn't mean that's what you end up with in your crop, because we have lots of naturals that come in as well. It really takes a forest management regime to look at the opportunities for where we plant, where we don't plant, and how we plant.
Some of the things being thought about.... In the areas where we won't get to plant, we're going to have lodgepole pine coming back. Rather than just letting it come in and having it over-dense and having the fuel loads build up, creating the same situation, maybe we have to find the elements that would allow us to space and thin those stands, get into those stands and open them up quite a bit more than we typically have. Prescribed fire is a tool, for sure. As Keith said, we can learn a lot from the elders in first nations on how to apply that, especially with respect to first nations' interests in plants and ecosystems and what they need for their traditional ways.
Going back to the idea that we can look at the past but can't push our future, we also have to look at new economies. When I say “new economies”, I mean using biomass for new products that we haven't traditionally made in British Columbia—things like bioplastics, biofuels, or biofabrics—and trying to bring in those opportunities so that, when we do forest management and we have this fibre that isn't your typical sawlog and can't go into a mill, it has a place to go, so we're not leaving those fuels out there and we can have cleaner air because we don't necessarily have to prescribe fire as much or have these catastrophic fires because of the fuel loads. That is another area that we really need to branch out into in British Columbia, and I think this is hand in glove with making a resilient, healthy forest through forest management.
It's not enough to say that we can do it. We have to have a place for it to go and a continuum across seed selection all the way through to final product.