Canada’s Forests Will Burn and Burn (www.theatlantic.com)

submitted 12 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) by gedaliyah@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

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When the boreal forests of Canada catch on fire, no one can do anything about it in many cases. The forests are part of Earth’s largest land biome, a greenbelt of wilderness that encircles the globe, and they’ve been suffering from the planet’s thermostat being jacked up. Wood-boring pests that flourish in milder climates have swept north and east, through tens of millions of acres. Droughts and dwindling snowpack have stressed the trees. They are ready to burn.

Many people simply don’t grasp the sheer magnitude of the boreal forest or what it would take to manage fires across its enormous area, Jed Kaplan, a professor in the Department of Earth, Energy, and Environment at the University of Calgary, told me: “You can’t control these fires. You cannot put personnel, fire engines, over an area that is the size of the entire American South, or something like that. It’s just way too big of an area.”

And so the fires spread, pouring out smoke that washes over the residents of faraway cities. The “Ontario Armageddon” (as one wildfire newsletter called it), along with several large fires burning in northern-Minnesota forests, has left Toronto with some of the worst air quality in the world this week and has shrouded New York City in a sickly gray haze. Canada has 869 active fires at the moment, and most are burning in wilderness areas where authorities monitor them but don’t try to put them out.

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[-] adespoton@lemmy.ca 4 points 10 hours ago

I don’t get the “especially in Northern Ontario bit.

At least N Ontario has lake systems and navigable waterways, as does N Manitoba. Go further west, and there’s absolutely nothing but forest for thousands of kilometres. You’re not going to be flying supplies and ground crew in, because the only vehicles big enough to get there are too big to land.

The other problem, of course, is that we’ve spent a century and a bit messing with the forests, which used to have regular burns that acted as fire breaks for the next year’s burns. Ground cover grew back thick and green in the ashes, and trees dispersed their seeds.

Now however, we’ve stopped that cycle, leading to overpopulation of insects, buildup of deadwood, and no natural fire breaks, meaning humans have to artificially do all the work that used to happen naturally… right when everything is heating up and weather systems are shifting.

[-] FaceDeer@fedia.io 4 points 9 hours ago

Yeah. Unfortunately, one pretty much inescapable part of the solution to this wildfire problem is wildfires. They need to burn through the backlog.

[-] grue@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

The other problem, of course, is that we’ve spent a century and a bit messing with the forests, which used to have regular burns that acted as fire breaks for the next year’s burns. Ground cover grew back thick and green in the ashes, and trees dispersed their seeds.

Now however, we’ve stopped that cycle, leading to overpopulation of insects, buildup of deadwood, and no natural fire breaks, meaning humans have to artificially do all the work that used to happen naturally… right when everything is heating up and weather systems are shifting.

As I understand it, at least some of the fires that had been happening previously were controlled burns by ~~Native Americans~~ First Nations people (sorry, USian talking about Canada), not "naturally" occurring ones.

https://parks.canada.ca/nature/science/conservation/feu-fire/autochtones-indigenous

https://www.nps.gov/subjects/fire/indigenous-fire-practices-shape-our-land.htm

this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2026

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