TOWN OF INGERSOLL, ON — Trees are an effective tool for helping communities fight climate change while improving air quality, conserving energy and enhancing local ecosystems. …The Government of Canada and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) announced an investment of $67,801,063 to support new urban forestry projects across Canada. Through a $64,166,393 investment, approximately 473,000 new trees will be planted as part of 165 tree-planting projects. In addition, $3,634,670 will fund 31 plans and studies focused on the sustainable expansion and resilience of community forests and trees, including urban forest management plans. Projects are located across British Columbia, the Prairies, Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada. New tree planting will help reduce flood risks by absorbing and slowing rainfall, protect buildings by acting as windbreaks, and create employment opportunities. Urban forestry plans and studies funding will increase the capacity of local governments to strategically manage canopies while enhancing community and forest resilience, ecological health and social equity.
If global emissions continue unchecked, rising temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns could amplify tree pests and diseases across more than 80 per cent of North American forests within decades, jeopardizing critical carbon sinks, air quality and the forestry economy. This is the key finding of a new UBC-led study published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution. The researchers found that insects pose the more immediate threat, with more than 60 per cent of the areas examined projected to experience 30 per cent more insect pressure by mid-century. Species like the spongy moth, already wreaking havoc in Canadian forests, could expand significantly in eastern North America by mid-century. “The forests that exist today aren’t going to be ones existing in 2040,” said senior author Dr. Jonathan Davies. “The process is happening already. I think we’ve got to put everything on the table because the status quo is no longer tenable.”
National survey seeks input from farmers and private woodlot owners to improve forestry policy, rural economic development, and environmental stewardship across Canada. Private forests are a familiar part of many Canadian farms, providing firewood, timber, wildlife habitat, clean water, and environmental benefits that extend far beyond property lines. Yet despite their importance, very little current information exists about the people who own and manage them. Now, Canadian Forest Owners (CFO), in partnership with researchers at McGill University, has launched the first national survey of private forest owners in more than two decades, seeking input from farmers and woodlot owners across the country. The initiative is designed to create an updated picture of Canada’s private forest sector and help governments make more informed decisions on forestry, climate, biodiversity, and rural economic development. …Many Canadian farms include woodlots that generate income, supply wood products, protect watercourses, enhance biodiversity, and contribute to carbon storage.
Canada is having an important conversation about the future of its forest sector. Fibre supply is tightening. Mills and communities face growing uncertainty. Wildfires, insects, conservation pressures, changing forest conditions and intensifying trade tensions are reshaping the economics of forestry. At the same time, governments are looking for ways to attract investment, improve productivity and strengthen rural economies. In that conversation, one of Canada’s significant forest resources has too often remained in the background: privately owned working forests. That is beginning to change. When Mark Carney announced the Canadian Forest Sector Transformation Task Force in November 2025, Canadian Forest Owners (CFO) saw an opportunity to challenge the traditional boundaries of Canada’s forest policy. When we presented to the Task Force in February and submitted recommendations in March, our message was straightforward: Canada cannot build a stronger, more competitive and resilient forest sector while leaving private forests and forest owners at the margins.
The U.S.-Canada trade war escalated sharply over the weekend. …There are a few obvious implications of the trade war that could fall on Canada’s environment and the nation’s natural resources:
Hundreds of trees have been found embedded with metal spikes in Vancouver Island’s upper Walbran Valley, according to a court ruling that extends an injunction against a logging blockade there until early 2028. The BC Supreme Court court ruling says the blockade activity has included vandalism of logging equipment and tree-spiking incidents, in which two fallers had their chainsaws damaged beyond repair when they struck spikes on Aug. 18. Last Friday’s ruling says the loggers weren’t injured, but tree spikes carry “significant risk of injury or death”. Investigations found several hundred trees in Tsawak‑Qin Forestry’s cutblocks had been embedded with spikes, many with their heads cut off and bark placed over the top. …Tsawak‑Qin Forestry’s activities in the upper Walbran Valley have been disrupted by protesters opposed to old-growth logging since August 2025. Justice H. William Veenstra’s ruling says “the new evidence establishes that there continues to be irreparable harm suffered by Tsawak-Qin”.
Campfire prohibitions will be lifted across the Coastal Fire Centre starting Thursday (Sept. 3), as wildfire danger continues to decline following recent rainfall and cooler temperatures. Effective at noon, Category 1 open-fire prohibitions, which include campfires, will be rescinded throughout the Coastal Fire Centre – which encompasses the Island and B.C.’s South Coast. Fire no larger than 0.5 metres high by 0.5 metres wide, used for recreational or ceremonial purposes, will be allowed. At the same time, Category 2 and Category 3 open-fire prohibitions will also be lifted in the Haida Gwaii Forest District. Category 2 fires include backyard burning, while Category 3 fires include larger industrial burning activities. However, Category 2 and Category 3 fires will remain prohibited throughout the rest of the Coastal Fire Centre. Some activities and equipment also remain prohibited, including binary exploding targets, fireworks, burn barrels or burn cages, controlled air incinerators, air curtain burners, and carbonizers.
Patrick Tom has been helping a crew plant trees in his community of Wekweètì, N.W.T., since late August. His job is to ferry personnel and supplies to an area on the south shore of Snare Lake, which is being replanted after a wildfire. A crew of roughly 45 people flew into the Tłįchǫ community — approximately 300 kilometres northeast of Behchokǫ̀ — to plant 425,000 black and white spruce trees over the span of two weeks. It’s part of the Tlicho government’s plan to plant 13 million trees across its lands by 2030, with the help of federal funding. The initiative aims to restore ecosystems and boreal caribou habitat, while also creating local jobs. Tom worked for the Ekati diamond mine for the last 27 years. When it went into receivership in July, Tom said he was able to retire and he now has a pension.
Canada’s last wild spotted owl was known as Skalula. …No official announcement was made when Skalula disappeared in 2023, the year after her mate died. …To this day, neither the provincial nor the federal government has publicly acknowledged the disheartening truth: the northern spotted owl, which nests only in old-growth forests, has gone extinct in Canada’s wild. …How did we so miserably fail the spotted owl? …B.C. is Canada’s most biodiverse province, meaning that it has the greatest variety of life. But the number of species at risk of extinction in the province — a key measure of biodiversity loss — is steadily climbing. …Chris Johnson, the chair-elect of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, says that the only way to help many struggling wildlife species is for the B.C. government to enact endangered species legislation. …Today, almost 500 species in B.C. are endangered, meaning they could soon be lost if nothing is done.
The end of wildfire season is beginning to fizzle as the B.C. Wildfire Service is nudging open the gates a little bit and allowing category one fires today. The combination of current and future forecasts, recent precipitation and improved overnight recoveries has reduced the need to prohibit campfires in the Southeast Fire Centre region. “The B.C. Wildfire Service takes several factors into account before rescinding prohibitions,” noted the BCWS in a statement. “This includes balancing the needs of the public with the need to mitigate the risk of human-caused wildfires.” As of noon, category one campfires will be permitted throughout the Southeast Fire Centre — which includes the Rocky Mountain Natural Resource District and the Selkirk Natural Resource District — and all non-municipal land across the Regional District of Central Kootenay. However, there are rules involved. A category one campfire must be set in accordance with section 20 of the Wildfire Regulation…
Forestry critic and B.C. Conservative MLA for Kamloops-North Thompson Ward Stamer wants to see the province salvage more wildfire-burned wood faster. He said that only about 5% of burned wood is logged on average in B.C. following a wildfire — a number he’s prefer to see rise to 25%. The former logger said he also wants to see cutting license issued faster, noting most burned trees are useless if not harvested within two years. …Stamer said once a trees dies, it begins deteriorating and each species does so at different rates. He said most burned trees that aren’t harvested within two years may only be good for low value chips, as opposed to other products such as plywood, veneer and saw logs. …Forestry Minister Ravi Parmar said the salvage rate is closer to eight to 10%. Parmar said the province is always trying to increase its salvage rate.
The province has ended its state of provincial emergency. The state of emergency was first declared Aug. 8 following a night of fast-moving fires, including the Bald Range wildfire that led to the evacuation of the District of Summerland. At the time, more than 20,000 people were evacuated from their homes. It was then extended Aug. 21 through to Aug. 29, but the province says the decision to end it early follows advice from emergency management officials. However, the province says the wildfire risk in B.C. remains high. The ending of the state of emergency has no effect on the current evacuation orders, evacuation alerts or local states of emergencies put in place by local governments or First Nations.
Prince George city council is being asked to support a call for an independent public inquiry into BC forest and wildfire management. A report, drafted by Coun. Garth Frizzell in his capacity as chair of the Standing Committee on Intergovernmental Affairs, goes before council on Monday, Aug. 31. It recommends the city submit a resolution to the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) asking the provincial government to establish an inquiry under the Public Inquiry Act. The UBCM holds its annual convention Sept. 14-18 in Vancouver. The proposed inquiry would examine the relationship between forest management practices and wildfire risk and severity, as well as the effectiveness of fuel management, prescribed burning, wildfire prevention and landscape-resilience strategies.
BURNABY, B.C. — The United Steelworkers union (USW) says the B.C. government’s proposed Working Forest Landscape Model is a step in the right direction, but … implementation cannot wait. “Our union and others have called for a clearly defined working forest for decades,” said Scott Lunny, USW Western Canada Director. “Government needs to move quickly to define the economic land base, increase the sustainable harvest and give workers and communities the certainty needed to rebuild our forest industry.” …USW says establishing where B.C.’s working forest will be only part of the challenge. The province must also determine how access to fibre from that land will support domestic manufacturing and employment. “These are public forests and a working forest needs to work for British Columbians,” said Lunny. “Greater certainty around the land base and fibre supply should mean greater certainty that those resources support mills, investment and good jobs here in B.C.” …“There is no time to waste”.
Large, devastating fires like those B.C. has witnessed this year frequently spark complaints and questions from the public: Why are there helicopters sitting at the local airport while smoke billows from a nearby mountain? Why are no squadrons of water bombers coming to the rescue? While officials might compare fighting a firestorm to spitting into a campfire, it does little to dispel the complaints that more could and should be done — in particular as anxious residents are evacuated and wait to hear if their homes, farm animals and pets have survived. To better understand how aircraft are used as a tool in wildfire fighting, The Tyee climbed aboard a Bell 407 deployed to one of the province’s largest wildfires. Flying above the 
Amid another brutal stretch of hot, dry weather across Canada, the so-called cultural burning practices of North America’s Indigenous peoples are in vogue. In fact, they’re being inflated to the point of being celebrated as an ethnically exclusive competency, supposedly distinct from western science. Parks Canada’s online resources say cultural burning must be Indigenous-led, “so as not to misappropriate cultural practices,” while claiming that prescribed fire… is a “colonial adaptation of cultural burning practised by many different Indigenous groups in Canada.” …We know that Indigenous communities have historically used low-intensity fires to maintain grasslands for grazing, corridors for travel and forests, among other purposes. The evidence of this is substantial and not in question, nor is the effectiveness of those methods in their particular contexts. But that is not uniquely Indigenous knowledge. It is a basic principle of fire management that’s understood and applied around the world.
About 83 kilometres of Forest Service Road segments across the Merritt Timber Supply Area have been identified for possible deactivation over the next three years, with work aimed at reducing erosion, protecting waterways and addressing safety concerns on inactive roads. BC Timber Sales is planning the work as part of its ongoing management of Forest Service Roads in the Merritt TSA, according to the Ministry of Forests. The tentative list includes segments in the Gordon Tyner, Pimainus, Skuhun, Wallace Creek, Finnegan Red Creek, Matthew Creek, Tulameen Champion, Olivine Champion Creek, Jim Kelly Creek, Sunday Summit, Victor Lake, Cook Creek, Mellin Pennask Lake and Pattinson Lake areas. The province says the road list remains tentative and could change as detailed assessments are completed. …Future wildfire response, silviculture, range management and recreational access will also be considered during planning.
More than 400 endangered animal and plant species could face accelerated extinction after the Donald Trump administration’s decision to rescind a rule that has protected old-growth forests for more than two decades. According to a new report from the Center for Biological Diversity, the rollback of the Bill Clinton-era “roadless rule” could put 7.4m acres of endangered-species habitat and nearly 1,800 miles of protected rivers and streams at risk, while opening more than 45m acres of national forests to roads, drilling and logging. The Trump administration moved last week to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, citing “outdated restrictions [that] have kept tens of millions of forested acres off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our communities”.
Satellite measurements detected declining photosynthetic activity in Western U.S. forests two years before bark-beetle mortality appeared in aerial detection surveys, according to new University of Utah-led research. The first-of-its-kind study suggests that satellite-observed chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF), a measure of plant photosynthesis, could provide an early warning of forest stress. As drought, wildfire and insect outbreaks occur with increasing frequency across the American West, the technology could also help scientists understand how these disturbances affect forests’ ability to absorb and store carbon from the atmosphere. …“The ultimate goal is to identify areas of concern early enough for land managers to investigate, mobilize crews, allocate funding or otherwise prepare before mortality becomes widespread,” said lead author Lewis Kunik. …In forests that would later experience bark-beetle mortality, the researchers detected a significant SIF decline roughly two years before mortality was seen in aerial surveys conducted by the USDA Forest Service. 
In Oregon’s Tillamook State Forest, a group of incarcerated men gathered around an instructor warning them about the dangers of an over-pressurized firefighting hose. …Such were the risks that these men were willing to take to avoid sleeping in a prison cell. “It’s dangerous, but that’s why we train, and we train hard,” said Jason Russell, a 41-year-old from Salem incarcerated at the South Fork Forest Camp, a state prison. In a few weeks, many of them would be on fire lines alongside thousands of other firefighters battling what would become a record-breaking fire season in Oregon. …But while most firefighters make $25 an hour on the fire line, Oregon’s incarcerated firefighters earn $25 a day. …Inmates earn wildland firefighting certifications and gain experience, which can help with employment opportunities after their prison term ends. Oregon is one of seven states that use prison labor to fight wildfires.
OREGON — The 2021 floods in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley caused upwards of $14 billion in damages. Since then, communities have brought lawsuits against logging companies and the provincial government, blaming them for logging practices that made flooding worse. Over the past 50 years throughout B.C., clear-cut logging has been the primary method of timber extraction across watersheds of all sizes. Floods are happening more often and are becoming more expensive, and unlike the storms that help trigger them, clear cutting and the associated cumulative impacts are something we can manage. When watersheds are assessed for flood risk, the question often asked is a simple one: How much of the watershed has been logged? …
Two environmental conservation groups and a Southeast Alaska tribe have filed suit against the U.S. Forest Service, challenging a logging project just east of Ketchikan. The Forest Service announced in July that it would move forward with the South Revilla Integrated Resource Project, a plan that includes harvesting over 5,000 acres of trees, mostly old growth, in the Tongass National Forest. …The complaint alleges that the project’s logging of old-growth trees will harm subsistence and recreation resources. It also highlights potential impacts to wildlife, the ecosystem and the economy. The suit lists several defendants, including the Forest Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It also lists Forest Service Region 10 Acting Regional Forester Jeremiah Ingersoll and the Tongass National Forest Acting Forest Service Supervisor Janelle Crocker. The Forest Service could not immediately be reached for comment.
Oregon environmental groups are worried that dropping the so-called Roadless Rule, recently proposed by the Trump Administration, will increase fire risk and harm wildlife, drinking water and the recreation economy. The proof, they say, is in the documents produced by the U.S. Forest Service. Other groups say those concerns are overblown and that removing the rule will result in better forest management. …The draft environmental impact analysis — produced by the Forest Service — laid out several risks of removing the Roadless Rule. It acknowledges that road density is linked to human-caused wildfires. …Removing the rule could also trigger a loss of $9 million a year in visitor spending for nearby communities, the environmental analysis said, due to changes in landscape or loss of recreation opportunities caused by future construction. …The American Forest Resource Council, a timber advocacy group, said many of the concerns are overstated because rescinding the Roadless Rule won’t automatically result in new roads or logging.
The Wrangell Ranger District has recently wrapped up a large goshawk survey to prepare for potential timber sales. There is a push to increase logging on federally managed lands in Alaska following the 2025 presidential order to “unleash Alaska’s extraordinary resource potential.” Ahead of any logging operation, there are a variety of wildlife surveys required before anything can be cut, including these goshawk surveys. …Cooper Freeman, the Alaska director for the Center for Biological Diversity said that, with renewed push for logging in the second Trump administration, there has been an increase of surveys, but that he did not think the survey methods were very effective at locating the hawks. “So it’s quite likely that many goshawks, if they’re there, would go undetected, and logging would harm the birds.”
ARIZONA — US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said that misguided forest management policies played a role in the recent deadly flash floods at the Grand Canyon. Burgum said that a failure to properly manage protected forest areas contributed to the potency of last year’s Dragon Bravo Fire on the North Rim, which in turn increased the risk of flash flooding on the canyon’s floor. “When the forest has been burned through, you get a lot of runoff,” Burgum said. …The Dragon Bravo Fire burned nearly 150,000 acres last summer. …A Dept. of the Interior Burned Area Emergency Response Team conducted a postfire assessment in August 2025. The assessment found that the burn scar would increase the water runoff and debris flow in Bright Angel Creek, but “they are unlikely to significantly impact values-at-risk under normal storm conditions.” Burgum, however, said the Dragon Bravo Fire and Saturday’s Bright Angel Creek flooding are connected.
Giant sequoias only grow naturally in California today. But they once ranged as far east as Colorado, Wyoming and Nevada, before the climate turned drier and pushed them into their current, narrower range. Now, even that shrunken sequoia forest is under threat. Wildfires have killed off nearly one-fifth of all large sequoias across their native range over the last decade; a steep loss for a species that can live for thousands of years. A new study … finds those losses aren’t inevitable. Researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno studied Mountain Home Demonstration State Forest, home to the world’s largest old-growth sequoia grove, after the 2020 Castle Fire. Some parts of the forest had been thinned or deliberately burned in the 15 years before the fire, while others hadn’t. The difference was stark. Sequoias in untreated forest died at more than double the rate of those in treated areas, said Bryant Nagelson, the study’s lead author.
TWISP, Wash. — A trio of conservation groups sued the Trump administration Monday, asking a federal judge to halt a sweeping logging project set to clear-cut mature and old-growth forests in north-central Washington state. “This lawsuit challenges the false narrative that we have to choose between healthy forests or safe communities,” Kristine Akland, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. The Center for Biological Diversity, joined by Kettle Range Conservation Group and Methow Forest Forum, accuse the U.S. Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service of violating multiple federal environmental laws through the approval of the Midnight Restoration Project.
OLYMPIA, Washington – The Washington Forest Protection Association (WFPA) and Washington Farm Forestry Association (WFFA) will appeal a Thurston County Superior Court decision upholding the state’s expanded buffer rule for non-fish-bearing (Np) streams. The appeal will ask whether forest-practices rules can be changed without first showing that existing protections are failing to protect fish and water quality. WFPA and WFFA said the state’s own record shows expected downstream benefits to fish are negligible to minor, and Ecology acknowledged the expanded rule may still allow temperature changes in non-fish streams. “This is not a conservation win if the state’s own record shows limited fish benefits, and immense harm to working forests and rural communities,” said Jason Spadaro, Executive Director of WFPA. …Elaine Oneil, Executive Director of WFFA. “If a rule strands harvestable timber or makes a parcel uneconomical to manage, that harm cannot be fixed later.” …The court has ruled, but policy questions remain.
CALIFORNIA — Tall trees are generally associated with high-biomass forests. This is particularly true for forests dominated by Sequoia sempervirens, the world’s tallest tree species. Extreme decay resistance, the ability to survive high-severity fires, shade tolerance and prolific trunk reiteration (resprouting) make the species unique, allowing tall redwood forests to accumulate more biomass and store more aboveground carbon than any other vegetation type. …A new study published in Forest Ecology and Management combined ground-based measurements and repeated (2007–2025) airborne laser scanning (ALS) to inventory the tallest redwoods and quantify forest biomass. …Forest biomass changed substantially over time. Large areas of primary forest gained biomass during the prestorm interval (2007–2022), averaging 10–13 metric tons per hectare annually. …These ALS-derived estimates of biomass change may be somewhat exaggerated. …Nonetheless, the amount of crown damage probably rivaled losses of live-tree biomass to treefall in California’s Redwood National and State Parks. 
Last week, the Trump administration announced it was moving forward with efforts to rescind the national Roadless Rule, which has governed roadless areas of U.S. Forest Service land for a quarter-century. But Idaho won’t be affected. That’s because of an effort, launched two decades ago during the brief governorship of now-Sen. Jim Risch, to secure a specific statewide roadless rule. Colorado is the only other state with its own rule. Idaho’s rule will remain in place, even if the Trump administration succeeds in reversing the national rule — a tragic outcome that places at risk some of the best remaining patches of wild habitat for fish and game, and risks increasing the number of wildfires, which are mostly caused by humans, mostly near roads. Idaho’s rule could provide a viable model for future protection of roadless areas in an era when federal land management decisions are likely to whipsaw with every presidential election for the foreseeable future.
WASHINGTON — A Thurston County, Washington judge upheld larger riparian buffers on timberlands in Western Washington, affirming a rule that will take 200,000 acres out of timber production. In ruling from the bench Aug. 21, Superior Court Judge Christine Schaller said the Forest Practices Board lawfully adopted the new buffer rule after years of study. She acknowledged the economic hardship faced by timberland owners and that her ruling will be appealed. The board, which regulates logging, voted 7-5 last year to expand buffers along streams without fish. The rule will go into effect Aug. 31 and require continuous 65- to 75-foot buffers. The old rule called for 50-foot buffers on half the length of streams. The Washington Department of Ecology said bigger buffers were need to prevent logging from raising stream temperatures in most cases. The timber industry says the buffers will immediately eliminate $1.8 billion worth of timber and have little environmental benefit
Land managers with the Flathead National Forest plan to approve a fuels-reduction project in the Swan Valley near Holland Lake using an emergency determination on the grounds that it lies in a “high-risk fireshed,” according to an Aug. 18 decision notice. Foresters say the project is eligible for an Emergency Action Determination (EAD) because it proposes to reduce wildfire risk while preserving the area’s old-growth forests. Initially released for public scoping in 2023, the Rumbling Owl Fuels Reduction Project spans 6,200 acres on the Swan Lake Ranger District of the Flathead National Forest southeast of Condon and east of Highway 83. According to an environmental assessment prepared by Jeff Durkin, the district silviculturist for the Swan and the project leader on Rumbling Owl, the project meets the newly established criteria for EAD authorization, which the agency has increasingly used to expedite approval of logging projects featuring a fuels-reduction component.
A federal judge has ordered the U.S. Forest Service to suspend a commercial logging project in southern Illinois’ Shawnee National Forest, finding the agency’s approval of the project under President Joe Biden violated the Endangered Species Act. Despite the agency’s own preliminary assessment showing an endangered bat species lived in the roughly 70-acre area targeted for the tree thinning project, the Forest Service did not wait for an official opinion from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to approve the project. Environmental groups sued, but by the time the judge issued a temporary restraining order halting the project last summer, a logging company had already cut down trees in 40 of the 67 acres. Separately, the Trump administration this summer has moved to change two federal rules, including one weakening the Endangered Species Act, making it easier to approve projects like logging, mining, oil and gas drilling and other development in federal lands and forests.
A new chapter for FSC in New Zealand is taking shape, with New Zealand-based members unanimously voting to join Australia under a shared Australia and New Zealand’s (FSC ANZ) governance model. This decision marks an important milestone for FSC across the region, solidifying a formal role for New Zealand-based members in FSC Australia and New Zealand’s governance and laying a stronger foundation for expanding FSC’s work, engagement, and impact in New Zealand. …New Zealand-based directors will be added to the FSC ANZ Board at the next Annual General Meeting to strengthen New Zealand’s representation and voice across the organisation’s Environmental, Social and Economic chambers. …FSC ANZ is planning to establish a dedicated presence in New Zealand, adding a new team member based in the country to work closely with members, certificate holders and stakeholders on the ground. …For FSC, New Zealand is a crucial part of the organisation’s future.
Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has said he wants to reinstate the death penalty for arsonists, following a wave of deadly forest fires. The official death toll stands at 12, but independent news outlets believe the figure is much higher. The president ordered the justice ministry to introduce changes to the criminal law introducing capital punishment for arsonists. Capital punishment remains in the country’s penal code for some offences, but no execution has been carried out since 1993. More than 100 wildfires have been recorded in recent days in the north-east of the country, most of which have been extinguished. …Under the current law, deliberately starting forest fires is punishable by up to 30 years in prison, or life imprisonment in certain cases. …While Algeria regularly experiences forest fires around the summer months, climate change has exacerbated the intensity and severity of recent wildfires in the country.