Canada’s wildfire paradox: New analysis highlights fewer fires, more destruction
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Canada’s wildfire season is becoming longer, larger and more destructive, according to an analysis of six decades of fire records by the federal government’s Canadian Forest Service.
The study shows that this trend is not being driven by more frequent fires, but by a smaller number of faster-growing wildfires that are burning more land than in the past, reinforcing a trend that federal scientists first identified years ago.
In 2019, fire scientists at Natural Resources Canada published a study that suggested wildfire activity across the country Steady growth since the mid-20th centuryDriven by rising temperatures and longer fire seasons.
The pattern at that time was uneven: some areas saw marked increases in area burned, while others appeared stable or decreasing. Human-caused fires were believed to be declining, reflecting decades of prevention efforts, and the largest fires, although increasing, had not yet dominated the national picture.
Updated study, recently published Canadian Journal of Forest ResearchExtends that analysis to 2024 using improved satellite mapping and nine additional fire seasons, including 2021, 2023 and 2024, the most severe fire seasons on record.
The research found that the area burned by wildfire is increasing in almost all Canadian eco-zones, even in the Pacific Northwest and Atlantic Canada regions. Both were once considered low risk due to wet conditions, but now show stable or increasing fire trends.
The study also shows that the largest fires now account for an increasing share of the damage and that while lightning is causing most wildfires, human-caused fires have begun to increase again since the early 2000s – a change that the authors link not to policy failure but to hotter, drier conditions that make more ignitions harder to control.
fight the invincible
“I think the increase in human-caused fires, especially larger fires, is due to the fuels drying up,” said Chelane Haynes, a research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service at Natural Resources Canada’s Great Lakes Forestry Center in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.
Haines is the lead author of both 2019 and 2025 national studies examining long-term changes in Canada’s wildfire regime.
He said the largest fires now reach a scale and intensity where traditional firefighting tactics are limited, forcing crews to focus on prevention and protection rather than stopping fires.
Haines said the impact of the largest wildfire events is increasingly visible nationally.
“They’re becoming responsible for a large portion of the burned areas because everything is so dry,” he said.
The dynamics described by Hanes are no longer abstract datasets but have emerged repeatedly in recent wildfire seasons across the country.
In July 2021, extreme heat and record temperatures led to wildfires, particularly in British Columbia Destroying Lytton Villagethat was just recorded Canada’s highest temperature on recordAt 49.6 C.
The 2023 wildfire season was widely reported The most severe on record in Canadian history.Scorched more than 15 million hectares of land and prompted mass evacuations Significant smoke pollution across Canada And in the United States.
In 2024, Wildfire in Jasper National Park in Alberta About 25,000 people were forced to evacuate, hundreds of structures were destroyed One of the country’s costliest disasters Year old.
While some wildlife thrive when boreal forests burn, experts say climate change and human activity have led to larger, more intense wildfires, increasing the negative impacts on some species.
fire risk pricing
Changes in the wildfire landscape are also being felt in Canada’s insurance industry, which is warning that increased wildfire risk is reshaping losses, premiums and long-term housing decisions across the country.
“As an industry we value risk, and we’ve seen an increase in natural disaster risk across Canada – but particularly in high-risk wildfire areas,” said Liam McGinty, vice-president of federal affairs at the Insurance Bureau of Canada.
McGinty said between 2005 and 2014, insured losses from wildfires in Canada averaged about $70 million a year, but in the recent decade, the average has hovered closer to $750 million — a 1,000 per cent increase in a little more than a decade.
He said the industry is responding by adjusting coverage prices in the most at-risk communities, which could mean higher premiums or changes in policies as companies manage their overall risk.
“Our job is to price the risk,” McGinty said. He said insurers have had to “change insurance policies” in areas of Canada where wildfire risk is higher.
He emphasized that wildfire coverage remains part of a standard home insurance policy in Canada and that coverage is “widely available,” adding, “It’s not a California-type situation at all,” referring to major insurers. Stopped writing or renewing policies in high-risk wildfire areas of the state after repeated devastating losses.
