Abstract
In the summer of 2016, I was standing along the banks of Vermillion River in the Canadian Rockies not far from the Burgess Shale, which is home to the fossilized impressions of weird and wonderful creatures that lived half a billion years ago. Paleontologist Charles Walcott discovered this site in 1909, but it was Harvard scientist Stephen J. Gould who made these fossils famous in his 1989 book Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. In that narrative on the quirks of evolution, Gould argued that as fit as these soft and hard-bodied animals might have been, fitness did not ensure their survival in a world that was rapidly cooling at the end of the so-called Cambrian explosion.
The world keeps on turning and the bush keeps on burning.
— Common phrase used by firefighters in Canada’s Northwest Territories
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Notes
- 1.
“Wildfires—Annual 2003,” National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, National Centers for Environmental Information, published online January 2004, retrieved May 8, 2017, https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/fire/200313.
- 2.
“Entire Going-to-the-Sun Road Open for Day-Use,” National Park Service press release, August 5, 2003, https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/news/release.htm?id=397.
- 3.
Bill Graveland, “Raging Forest Fires Force Evacuations in Crowsnest Pass Area,” Globe and Mail, August 4, 2003, 4.
- 4.
Gary Filmon, “Firestorm 2003: Provincial Review,” February 15, 2004, http://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/farming-natural-resources-and-industry/forestry/wildfire-management/governance/bcws_firestormreport_2003.pdf.
- 5.
Quoted in Charles J. Hanley, “Researchers Link Wildfires to Climate Change,” Associated Press, July 21, 2006.
- 6.
M. D. Flannigan and C. E. Van Wagner, “Climate Change and Wildfire in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Forest Research 21 (1991): 66–72.
- 7.
Brian J. Stocks, “Global Warming and Forest Fires in Canada,” Forest Chronicles 69 (1993): 290–93.
- 8.
Michael Weber and Brian J. Stocks, “Forest Fires and Sustainability in the Boreal Forests of Canada,” Ambio 27, no. 7 (1998): 545–50.
- 9.
Filmon, “Firestorm 2003,” 76.
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© 2017 Edward Struzik
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Struzik, E. (2017). Visions of the Pyrocene. In: Firestorm. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-819-0_5
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