For two decades, Harold Larson helped battle wildfires across BC, Alberta, the US, often working shoulder-to-shoulder with structural firefighters. But at every one of those fires where he and his crew risked their safety alongside their municipal colleagues, there was one perplexing difference: According to the federal government, Mr. Larson was not classified as a firefighter at all. …It’s a holdover from wildland firefighting’s early decades, when the job wasn’t to protect homes, towns and lives – it was to protect timber values as part of the country’s forestry industry. …Canada’s wildland firefighters are seeking to join their municipal counterparts, a cause most recently championed by Vancouver Island MP Gord Johns. …As fire seasons continue to worsen, Mr. Larson said this only underscores the need for Ottawa to recognize that both structural and wildland firefighters are equally important when it comes to keeping people and communities safe. [to access the full story a Globe & Mail subscription is required]
The Canadian government recently announced that it will lease a fleet of 10 firefighting aircraft and other support assets to be deployed for the 2026 wildfire season. The plan will see these 10 leased aircraft being managed by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre deployed strategically across the country and made available to provinces as they face intense wildfires. …This announcement follows the government’s fall 2025 budget announcement of a $316.7-million investment in Canada’s aerial wildfire-fighting capacity — an announcement that acknowledged a growing national challenge. …Canada’s wildfire aviation system remains fundamentally decentralized. What Canada lacks is a clearly defined national aerial response framework. That framework should establish how federally-funded aircraft are deployed, how they are prioritized when multiple provinces face simultaneous fires, and how they integrate with the emerging detection technologies — including satellite monitoring and long-endurance drones — that can identify fires earlier than ever before.
The natural cooling effect of snow in northern forests following forest fires is rapidly diminishing. As a result, a fragile climate equilibrium threatens to disappear, potentially leading to additional warming in one of the most climate-sensitive regions on Earth. This is the conclusion of new research by Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. …After a forest fire, the landscape in northern regions often remains open and covered with snow for a long time. This snow reflects a great deal of sunlight and makes the Earth’s surface brighter—an effect known as snow albedo. For years, this compensated for part of the warming caused by CO2 emissions from forest fires. [The study found] that the cooling effect of snow has decreased by nearly 30 percent since the 1960s. Whereas in the past almost half of Canadian forest fires eventually reached natural climate equilibrium …this now applies to only about one in four or five fires.
CRESTON, BC — A Kootenay-based project is receiving provincial funding to convert forestry waste into a soil supplement, benefiting agriculture and forestry sectors. …Ravi Kahlon, Minister of Jobs and Economic Growth, said “By turning wood waste into valuable new products, this project is creating jobs, supporting local businesses and helping build a stronger future for the community.” …Through the Rural Economic Diversification and Infrastructure Program (REDIP), the Province is providing approximately $182,000 to Wildsight to support its Fire for Healthy Soils project in Creston. The funding supports a pilot project to convert wood waste into biochar, which is a stable, carbon-rich form of charcoal produced by heating organic waste in a low-oxygen environment. …The provincial investment will support Wildsight, the Creston Community Forest and the Regional District of Central Kootenay to collaboratively pilot a biochar business project using low-cost kiln technology.
Kelowna has topped the list of Canadian cities most at risk from wildfires in 2026, according to a report from a Toronto-based online insurance company. Using data from Natural Resources Canada’s recently upgraded Canadian Wildland Fire Information System, MyChoice said Kelowna has a wildfire Risk Index score of 6.8/10. It was the only city to get a “very high” rating on the MyChoice Canada’s 2026 wildfire risk map. “While Prairie cities recorded more severe forecast fire weather conditions, Kelowna’s extremely high community exposure, driven by dense wildland-urban interface development, surrounding forest fuel, and historical wildfire activity, pushed it to the top overall,” said MyChoice in its annual wildfire study. To calculate the wildfire risk index, MYChoice gave equal weight to two factors: Forecast fire weather severity and community exposure.
The Province is investing $155 million toward reforestation programs to plant more than 125 million trees throughout BC. The funding, which also includes investments from the federal government, will deliver both large-scale reforestation and targeted projects that restore critical habitats, conserve biodiversity and support wildfire recovery. “Since 2017, we’ve invested in planting 400 million trees in B.C. Now, we’re adding 125 million more,” said Ravi Parmar, Minister of Forests. “As we head into the Council of Canadian Forest Ministers Conference, hosted right here at home, we’re showing how B.C. continues to lead not only in forestry, but in reforestation and restoration. The Province’s reforestation investments will support: more than $56 million for reforestation, more than $1 million for B.C.’s Riparian Recovery Project, and more than $99 million for large-scale reforestation through the BC Forest Investment Program. …B.C. has secured more than $200 million in federal funding for reforestation and habitat restoration initiatives in British Columbia…
In 2024, the Tsay Keh Dene Nation and McLeod Lake Indian Band bought a logging licence near the town of Mackenzie from Canfor for $69M. …“It’s just a huge step to have some local Indigenous nations who are vested in our community step forward,” Makenzie Mayor Atkinson said. …But what if Canfor and others aren’t logging at rates close to what their licences say they can? If they sell such licences, what should those licences be valued at? And what role should the B.C. government play as the party that issues those licences and must approve any future sales? …Canfor, West Fraser and Western Forest Products alone control 39% of the timber that the government has firmly committed to logging companies. For decades, successive provincial governments granted logging licences to companies on the requirement that the public get something in return. The quid pro quo was that the companies would build mills.
The Syilx Okanagan Nation is calling on the federal government to issue an emergency order protecting critical habitat for Southern Mountain Caribou. In a filing under Section 80 of the federal Species at Risk Act, the Syilx Okanagan Nation is calling for immediate and enforceable protections for habitat used by the Columbia North, Frisby-Boulder and Central Selkirk herds, which occupy areas within Syilx Okanagan territory in southern British Columbia. “The current provincial and federal recovery measures have failed to address ongoing habitat destruction and cumulative effects across caribou ranges,” Chief Dan Wilson of the Okanagan Indian Band said in a media release. … “The continued logging of critical caribou habitat is inconsistent with Syilx Forestry Principles and Standards, yet the province continues to authorize logging in these core areas,” Coun. Jordan Coble, chair of the Syilx Nation Natural Resource Committee said in a media release.
MANITOBA — A northern Manitoba tree-planting program is trying to replace trees destroyed by wildfires, but the cancellation of the federal two billion trees program is making that more challenging. In 2016, this forest in Manitoba’s Interlake region, about 300 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, was devastated by a jack pine budworm infestation. It was starting to regenerate when wildfire ravaged the Devils Lake area in 2021. Areas just north are already burning this spring. Marley Moose says she felt sad when she returned to the forest three years ago as part of a tree-planting program through Nekoté LP, an Indigenous-owned corporation representing seven Swampy Cree First Nations in northern and central Manitoba. According to the Canadian Tree Nursery Association (CTNA), the country is losing trees faster than nature can grow them or people can plant them.
A new logging road project on the Sunshine Coast has drawn concern from local environmental advocates. At the same time, provincial officials say the work is designed to improve access and protect water resources. The Ministry of Forests confirmed to Coast Reporter that it is responsible for the road-building contract tied to Timber Sale Licence A94817. This project will see “just over 4km” of new road constructed to “move industrial traffic away from high-use public roads” and to create long-term access for multiple user groups. The ministry also said that the design has “enhanced overland techniques to minimize impacts to ground water,” along with water-quality monitoring and environmental oversight. However, Elphinstone Logging Focus’s (ELF) Ross Muirhead says the scope of the project is unusual for the region, saying four kilometres of brand new logging road is “unprecedented” on the Coast and that most projects are much shorter.
The start to the 2026 wildfire season has been slow with the number of fires raging across the country well below average, but government officials warn that as the summer progresses there’s a risk things could get much worse. “Despite the fact that we’re seeing so little activity so far this year … this summer retains the potential to be a significant one right across the country,” a government official said Thursday during a technical briefing. The official said that while the wildfire risk is unlikely to result in a record-breaking year like 2023 or 2025, the federal government is forecasting above average conditions as the season progresses. Whether that happens depends, officials explained, on what happens to the weather over the next few months. If the above average temperatures predicted for across the county come to pass, B.C. faces the highest wildfire risk, particularly in July.
In 2025’s budget, Ontario allotted $135 million for its Emergency Forest Firefighting fund, which Firefighter Noah Freedman describes as money that “keeps the lights on.” The province ended up spending double that: $271 million, according to this year’s budget. But that same document penciled in just $150 million again for this year. The province did not respond to requests from Canada’s National Observer asking why the budget hasn’t been increased. Not allotting adequate funds translates to real impacts on the frontlines, said Freedman, who is also vice president of Ontario Public Service Employees Union Local 703. He said last season was “riddled with logistical problems” due to a lack of available funding: not having crews and helicopters where they were needed, and scrambling to request more… “None of that is because of our leadership in our agency. It’s a result of not getting anywhere near the funding that we need to truly be decision-makers,” Freedman said.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins claims “moving the Forest Service closer to the forests we manage is an essential action that will improve our core mission of managing our forests.” That is sophistry — a failed attempt to justify an ill-advised, destructive reorganization plan to remove Forest Service headquarters from Washington and radically cut its research infrastructure. Her fallacy implies that adjacent communities have a superior claim on national forests. …Government nihilists and dismantlers have for years peddled the “proximity begets policy expertise” canard, without evidence. …Meanwhile, Tom Schultz, the chief of the Forest Service, made clear his lingering allegiance to his former employer’s interests. Last month, he laid them out to House appropriators: “timber sales, critical minerals permitting, grazing allotment management.” That timber, he said, is “vital to the nation’s well-being.” In reality, only 6 percent of the total timber supply in the country comes from national forests.
MONTANA — The US Forest Service and the timber industry have effectively lobbied Congress to enact laws based on fire paranoia that cut the public owners of these forests out of the process. They want the government to build roads at taxpayer expense to while compromising the best remaining fish and wildlife habitat and quiet spaces. Upon a molehill of truth they have constructed a mountain of disinformation. Claiming an emergency, the Forest Service is fast-tracking commercial timber sales in ways that severely limit and exempt them from environmental analysis. …They are removing the administrative review and public objection process. The bad stuff for wildlife, fish and people including ugly clearcuts, road construction and reduced water quality are being frontloaded. The good stuff including stream restoration and road reclamation are back ended. If past is prologue, the latter will not be funded or implemented as the Forest Service shifts its priority.
The world is losing its forests faster than it can save them, with severe consequences for the climate, biodiversity and over one billion people who depend on forests for their livelihoods, according to the United Nations’ latest Global Forest Goals Report 2026. Although many countries have expanded forest restoration efforts, strengthened governance frameworks, and improved monitoring systems, progress remains critically insufficient to halt deforestation, lift forest-dependent communities out of poverty, and meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. “We know what to do. We need to act on the information and knowledge we have. But do we have the will to act?” said Éliane Ubalijoro, chief executive officer of Landscape Alliance, the new operating name of the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR & ICRAF). That question runs through the report, which finds that existing tools, policies and institutions have yet to deliver change at the scale required. 
The UK Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has published detailed guidance setting out how a planned UK‑EU sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) deal will reshape forestry-related trade – and is urging businesses to start preparing now. In a wide‑ranging update, the department set out how the agreement would operate in practice, including the removal of most routine border checks and certification requirements for goods moving between Great Britain and the EU. But the guidance also makes clear the scale of regulatory change required, with the UK set to align dynamically with EU rules across a wide set of areas, including pesticides and plant imports. Among the most significant operational shifts set out for horticultural businesses (which includes forestry-related activities). …Further detail on transition periods and exceptions is expected later in 2026, with full implementation targeted for mid‑2027. Read the full 