Canada's wildfire paradox: fewer fires, greater destruction highlighted in new analysis
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Canada's wildfire seasons are growing longer, larger and more destructive, according to a six-decade analysis of fire records by the federal government's Canadian Forest Service.
The study shows the trend isn't being driven by more frequent fires but by a smaller number of increasingly large wildfires that are burning more land than in the past, reinforcing a trend federal scientists first identified years ago.
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The updated study, recently published in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research , extends that analysis through 2024 using improved satellite mapping and nine additional fire seasons that comprise several of the most severe on record, including 2021, 2023 and 2024.
The research found that the area burned from wildfires continues to rise across nearly all Canadian eco-zones, even in the Pacific Northwest and Atlantic Canada regions. Both were once considered lower risk because of wetter conditions but are now showing flat or increasing fire trends.
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The study also illustrates how the largest fires now account for a growing share of the damage and that while lightning continues to drive most wildfires, human-caused fires have begun increasing again since the early 2000s — a shift the authors link not to policy failure but to hotter, drier conditions that make more ignitions harder to control.
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In July 2021, wildfires driven by extreme heat and record temperatures swept through British Columbia, notably destroying the village of Lytton , which had just recorded Canada's highest temperature on record , at 49.6 C.
The 2023 wildfire season was widely reported as the most severe on record in Canadian history , scorching more than 15 million hectares and prompting large-scale evacuations and significant smoke pollution across Canada and into the United States.
In 2024, a wildfire in Jasper National Park in Alberta forced the evacuation of roughly 25,000 people, destroyed hundreds of structures and become one of the country's most costly disasters of the year.
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The shift in the wildfire landscape is also being felt in Canada's insurance industry, which is warning that rising wildfire risk is reshaping losses, premiums and long-term housing decisions across the country.
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McGuinty said between 2005 and 2014, insurance losses from wildfires in Canada were about $70 million a year, but in the most recent decade, that average has climbed closer to $750 million — a 1,000 per cent increase in a little over a decade.
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