CBC News features on the Canadian wildfire season:
- Another chaotic fire season on the horizon in B.C. (video)
- Ontario’s Minister of Natural Resources about the start of the wildfire season (audio)
- What Nova Scotians can expect this wildfire season (video)
- How governments can help Indigenous communities impacted by wildfires (video)
- Sask. heads into wildfire season ‘more prepared than ever,’ public safety agency says (print)
LA RONGE, Saskatchewan — With Canada aiming to protect 30 per cent of land and water by 2030, a new study shows the federal government should pursue a conservation method which takes wildfires into account. That’s according to La Ronge’s Aaron Bell, who recently had a research paper published by the Ecological Society of America on March 30 as part of his PhD in Biology. The project, which includes experiments on 42 islands in the Lac La Ronge region, focused on testing competing ideas on how government’s design protected areas such as nature reserves, or provincial and national parks. …Bell proposing government’s use a pyrodiversity-biodiversity method, which promotes and maintains diverse plants and fauna and thereby generating diversity. …“I’m hoping it enables people in the North to say we’re not managing fires at all for biodiversity and maybe this is something we should think about moving forward,” he said. 
A years-long investigation into a special RCMP unit that polices protests against resource extraction in BC is finished but can’t be finalized because the RCMP’s oversight body has been without a chairperson for more than a year. The Civilian Review and Complaints Commission (CRCC) receives and oversees public complaints against the Mounties. It recently announced the completion of a systemic investigation into the Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG), which drew national attention in 2019. …It’s unclear why the CRCC has been without a chairperson since January 2025. …At the top level of the agency there is meant to be a chairperson and up to four other members. According to the CRCC, all of those positions are currently vacant. …The majority of complaints against C-IRG came in response to civil court injunction enforcements and arrests in relation to Wet’suwet’en-led opposition to Coastal GasLink pipeline and protests against old-growth logging in the Fairy Creek area.
The widely discussed West Fraser forest management plan for West Bragg Creek and Moose Mountain has been updated to incorporate a new provincial wildfire mitigation program. West Fraser outlined the changes during its annual spring open house April 1 at the Cochrane RancheHouse, including a new supplementary harvest area in West Bragg Creek and a delayed timeline for Moose Mountain operations. The updates align with Alberta’s Community Hazardous Fuels Reduction (CHFR) program, introduced last year to reduce wildfire risk near vulnerable communities. “Working with forest companies, the program prioritizes the harvest of hazardous fuels within five kilometres of surrounding vulnerable communities,” the province said in an information package. “The CHFR program leverages existing forest tenure holders to adjust harvesting plans to make an immediate impact.” …“They’ve asked us as industry to prioritize our operations in that area,” said Tyler Steneker, woodlands manager for West Fraser Cochrane. 
Do you know the Okanagan is home to some of the very last remnants of interior old growth fir and spruce forests, specifically Peachland’s watershed, near Glen Lake? Do you know Glen Lake is a major source of our community drinking water, as it joins Peachland Creek before supplying our brand-new $35M water treatment plant? …Tell your government, Peachland’s trees are not destined for mills, ships to Asia or a flailing forestry industry safety-net. Peachland watershed’s forests are worth more standing, they store 83 per cent more carbon than pine plantations and mono-culture conifer farms. Most importantly we rely on their free infrastructure services and natural ecosystem benefits. …Act now before your back country is compromised. Four ways to make a stand! Write, call, online submissions and a petition…
The Government of British Columbia and Tla’amin Nation have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to enhance collaborative stewardship actions in Tla’amin Nation territory, focusing on advancing key treaty commitments through a shared stewardship framework. The MOU, or the yiχmɛtštəm ʔəms gɩǰɛ Territorial Stewardship Action Plan, sets out how the B.C. government and Tla’amin Nation will work together to care for land and water, heritage resources, and Tla’amin wildlife harvesting rights in the region. In the Tla’amin language, yiχmɛtštəm ʔəms gɩǰɛ means “together we are taking care of the land.” “With the signing of this memorandum of understanding, the Province and Tla’amin Nation have taken a significant step forward to implement key commitments of the Tla’amin Treaty,” said Randene Neill, Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship.
After roughly 100 sawmills, pulp mills, and engineered wood plants closed down or cut shifts since 2000, and thousands of loggers lost their jobs, the trade union representing those workers has its hands full. The consensus is: this is do-or-die time to stabilize the forest industry in British Columbia. USW Canada – District 3 represents workers across Western Canada, including BC’s unionized forestry workforce. Recently, District 3 Director Scott Lunny offered a forward-looking view of the industry on a podcast, despite the challenges it faces. Jeff Bromley, the union’s Wood Council Chair, put it this way: “What’s the alternative—giving up on rural communities throughout the province? We accept the responsibility to manage a transition in the best interest of our members.” …The Provincial Forest Advisory Council’s report, From Conflict to Care, has tabled a set of recommendations — and the Steelworkers Union agrees with its main thrust.
Textbook disaster capitalism. That’s how a forest advocacy group describes the Ministry of Forests’ Forest Statutes Amendment Act, a set of legislative changes to the Forests and Range Practices Act. “As social license for continuing to log primary forests dries up, the Ministry of Forests doubles down, accelerating logging while claiming that BC is a global leader in sustainable forest practices,” said Jenn Matthews, in a Conservation North news release. …The proposed changes would also expand ‘salvage’ logging, a controversial practice where trees are harvested following a natural disturbance. “Salvage logging – especially in forests that have never been logged – damages soils, wildlife habitat, and water flows,” said Conservation North’s director, ecologist Michelle Connolly. “Moreover, when you log after natural disturbance, you’re robbing the forest of key building blocks (including still-living trees) for the forest that will follow. The Ministry’s claim that this is forest stewardship is garbage.”
High in a tree in Vancouver’s Stanley Park, an arborist dangles from a climbing harness with a chainsaw… The work is part of a significant – and, to some, distressing – intervention to address the Hemlock looper moth outbreak that killed almost a third of the public park’s 600,000 trees between 2020 and 2023. …what’s happening in the park underscores the broader challenges of managing city green spaces in the era of climate change. …The city says those dead trees pose many risks, and the only way to deal with them is with saws. Joe McLeod, the city’s associate director of urban forestry, called it a “risk mitigation project for public safety.” …To better understand the twin risks of wildfire and falling trees, the city hired veteran wildfire ecologist and forester Bruce Blackwell. …None of this has sat well with Stanley Park Preservation Society founder, Michael Robert Caditz. …But fuel mitigation isn’t about preventing the most common fires; it’s about protecting against the worst possible ones, the kind of fires that occur on the most extreme weather days, when high temperatures, low humidity and strong winds combine to drive the wildfire risk into the red. [A Globe and Mail subscription is required for full story access]
The B.C. government is recommending a fine against those responsible for the deaths of more than a dozen cattle last fall, but the Ministry of Environment and Parks won’t say who, exactly, investigators believe is to blame for poisoning in the Quesnel area. The October incident prompted public outcry… The cattle … were believed to have been poisoned when they consumed nitrogen fertilizer meant to accelerate timber growth. B.C.’s Ministry of Forests said that laboratory analyses of the fertilizer and animal tissues are still being completed. …Meanwhile, the investigation under the Environmental Management Act has concluded with investigators recommending an administrative penalty — a fine imposed on a person or business alleged to have violated a regulatory requirement. …James Steidle, of Stop the Spray BC, worries that the poisonings did not result from a mishap but from standard forestry practices.
The Ministry of Forests has responded to residents’ concerns about a proposed logging project in the north BX area of Vernon. Area residents launched a petition last month in an effort to halt the 24-hectare logging operation near Hartnell Road and Brookside Creek. “Forestry plans to clear a significant amount of very old cedar and fir trees along the steep Brookside Creek catchment area. It will be highly visible from the many communities in Vernon,” the petition stated. In an email, the MOF said the area will not be clear cut. “BC Timber Sales is in the early stages of developing a wildfire risk-reduction project in the Brookside Creek area to increase forest resiliency against wildfire. Suggestions that the area will be clear cut are incorrect,” the MOF said. …The ministry said wildfire risk reduction projects are guided by a fuel management prescription … typically resulting in relatively high levels of tree retention.
OTTAWA, ON—Canadian Forest Owners (CFO) is pleased to welcome Forest Nova Scotia to its membership, expanding its national network in Nova Scotia, home to Canada’s largest private forest region. The province has the highest proportion of privately owned forest land in the country, supported by a diverse ownership base and a highly integrated forest sector. “Forest Nova Scotia represents a strong diversity of interests within its membership and is a valuable complement to our existing Nova Scotia members, including the Federation of Nova Scotia Woodland Owners and several large corporate members,” said Andrew de Vries, CEO of Canadian Forest Owners. “Forest Nova Scotia will further strengthen our national policy efforts and help raise awareness of the important role private forests play across Canada.” CFO represents approximately 480,000 private forest owners nationwide. Collectively, they manage 10% of Canada’s forest land base, contribute 20% of forest production, and play a vital role in sustainable forest management across the country.
For more than a year, the Trump administration has said it wants to harvest more timber from national forests. Now, officials are asking Congress to pay for the promise. The administration’s budget request would more than quadruple Forest Service spending on timber preparation and sales in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, even as many other agency priorities face steep reductions or elimination. The proposal calls for $175 million in the forest products account, up from $39 million this year. The administration didn’t ask for an increase a year ago, as it was settling in after taking the reins from the Biden administration. Spending on forest products has been flat for years, said Nick Smith, a spokesperson for the American Forest Resource Council, which represents companies harvesting timber from federal lands… saying the requested increase was a long-overdue investment in a programme that had operated at a small scale for decades. [to access the full story an E&E subscription is required]
The administrative architecture of America’s national forests is undergoing its most radical transformation in decades. In a series of swift moves designed to prioritize industrial output over conservation, the Trump administration has initiated a sweeping overhaul of the US Forest Service (USFS), relocating its headquarters and dismantling the regional oversight structures. …By moving the agency’s center of gravity from Washington, DC, to Salt Lake City, Utah, and shuttering nine regional offices, the administration is pivoting away from a centralized, science-driven conservation model toward a decentralized system focused on the immediate extraction of timber and wood products. For rural America, the impact is twofold. While the administration is pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the timber industry and sawmill infrastructure, the move guts the scientific research and environmental safeguards that many rural communities rely on. This transition effectively replaces long-term ecological stewardship with a short-term commodity-driven mandate.
Washington — The U.S. Forest Service is closing 57 of its 77 research facilities in 31 states under a reorganization plan announced this week, threatening science that looked at how wildfires, drought, pests and global warming are putting pressure on forests. The agency plans to consolidate its research division into a centralized office in Fort Collins, Colorado, and move field researchers to locations in nearby states. But employees said they feared the move would lead many scientists to leave instead. The reorganization will also move the agency’s headquarters to Salt Lake City from Washington, affecting 260 employees. …The agency is closing six research and development facilities in California, five in Mississippi, four in Michigan and three in Utah, among others. It will also close all of its nine regional offices, which currently manage 154 national forests. Some states will have their own offices and others will be consolidated. …One senior scientist, speaking anonymously, said that the Forest Service wasn’t clear about whether the scientist’s research work would continue to get funding or where the scientist would be relocated…
Tropical forests span 1.6 billion hectares of Earth. …But over the past two decades, an average of 10 million hectares of these forests have been lost each year, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, affecting the ecosystems and communities that depend on them. NASA scientists recently developed a new method for tracking tropical forest loss that delivers deforestation alerts more than three months faster than current methods. Although the technique was designed for the Amazon rainforest, data from a recently launched satellite are expected to expand its application globally. …To address Landsat’s cloud challenge, researchers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center tuned into a different wavelength. Led by Africa Flores-Anderson, associate program manager for NASA’s Ecosystem Conservation Program, the team piloted a system for the Amazon that combines existing satellite-based approaches with cutting-edge radar data. …Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) doesn’t require daylight or clear skies. 
MONTANA — The U.S. Forest Service plans to create a logging unit across regional national forests, seeking to boost economic stability by committing to process timber only via local businesses. The new Sustained Yield Unit – a concept created by 1944 federal law – would include 22 Montana counties and all of Helena-Lewis & Clark and Beaverhead-Deerlodge national forests, as well as most of Custer Gallatin. …Speaking for the Governor’s Office, Amanda Kaster, director of Montana’s Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, expressed the state’s strong support. …The draft plan estimates that the unit would directly support 192 jobs per year over the next decade, plus an additional 225 jobs via economic ripple effects. But the Marks saw the yield unit’s harvest plan as inadequately ambitious. …Barb Cestero, Montana director at the Wilderness Society, feared that given the Forest Service’s recent staff cuts, a potential over-emphasis on logging could be problematic.
COULTERVILLE, California – Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir and Gifford Pinchot are turning over in their graves as Donald Trump launches a devastating war against the conservation movement. “With the subtlety of a wrecking ball and the morality of a foreclosure notice the Trump administration announced the most devastating attack on the US Forest Service in the agency’s 121-year history. …The administration announced it would move the USFS headquarters out of Washington, D.C. to Salt Lake City, Utah. “They’re shuttering every single one of the 10 regional offices that have governed this agency and with them, the career professionals,” wrote Jim Pattiz. More than 50 research outlets across 31 states are set to close, labs that house decades of irreplaceable long-term science, “the kind you literally cannot restart once it’s gone,” Pattiz says. …Unfortunately, conservation groups like the Sierra Club built by John Muir have lost their focus and their power to bring change.
In 2001, the Forest Service signed the Roadless Rule. The Trump administration is seeking to rescind the rule. During a brief public comment period, 99% of the respondents opposed the idea. The Roadless Rule affected 58.5 million acres of Forest Service roadless lands and put them off-limits to new road construction, logging, and road reconstruction. As the Forest Service recognized in its original review, these roadless lands “have the greatest likelihood of altering and fragmenting landscapes, resulting in immediate, long-term loss of roadless area values and characteristics.” Abolishing protection from logging and roading provided by the Roadless Rule has major economic consequences, both in direct costs and in avoided costs. For instance, a practical rationale for the rule is the Forest Service’s acknowledgment that the roughly 370,000 miles of existing Forest Service road network could not be maintained. There is already an $11 billion backlog in road maintenance, and creating even more roads would exacerbate this situation.
For the last 25 years, 58 million acres of American forest have had no new roads, no logging equipment, and no reason to appear on anyone’s industrial map. This year that is changing — and much faster than most people realize. The 
Mountains across the West have lost their usual wintry look this year. Snowpacks in the Cascade Range, the central and southern Rockies, and the Sierra Nevada are significantly below average. As of February 1, 2026, Oregon, Colorado, and Utah reported the lowest snowpack levels on record since continuous snow data collection began in the early 1980s. …This condition is a snow drought—a period when snowpack is abnormally low relative to the time of year and location. Many of the areas with low snow received ample precipitation early in the season. November and December snowfall was near normal in many parts of the West and looked to be setting the stage for a reasonable snow year. However, warm and dry January conditions and scattered rain-on-snow events in February caused much of the early accumulated snow to melt. This condition has put large parts of the West in a 
For generations, the Organized Village of Kake and other Southeast Alaska tribes have been stewards of the Tongass National Forest… This is not just land; the forest is our heritage and way of life. …The forest’s old growth trees store more carbon than they release, making the Tongass the nation’s greatest natural climate defense. …Yet this irreplaceable ecosystem faces a threat. The Trump administration is attempting to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, a policy that for more than 25 years has safeguarded nearly 58 million acres of national forests. The administration is proposing to strip protections from 44.7 million acres of ancestral homelands, including the Tongass National Forest. This is not just bad policy; it is a direct violation of tribal treaty rights, trust and federal law. The Roadless Rule is simple and effective. It prevents destructive road-building and industrial-scale logging in remote forest areas while preserving access for recreation, subsistence and cultural practices.
In the North Cascades… the Mount Baker School District is facing a budget deficit exceeding $1 million, which local officials say is tied to declining timber sales on state lands. Three years ago, the rural district entered into what’s known as “binding conditions,” an arrangement where the state now oversees its day-to-day financial operations. Since then, it’s cut around 30 employees and increased class sizes. “Our main reason that we went in binding conditions was a precipitous drop in timber revenue,” said Russ Pfeiffer-Hoyt, school board president. The district’s timber revenue predicament is not unique among rural school districts. And it highlights rising tension around how the state is managing its public forests at a time when Lands Commissioner Dave Upthegrove has limited logging of some older tracts of trees. In the backdrop is a debate about whether Washington’s K-12 schools should depend heavily — or at all — on timber harvests.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska – The federal government isn’t holding public meetings on a rule that could reshape logging across the nation’s largest national forest — so a conservation group is doing it instead. The Southeast Alaska Conservation Council is hosting a series of community “public hearings” this month on the Tongass National Forest’s roadless rule. …The group plans to collect public testimony and submit it directly into the federal record as the US Forest Service weighs potential changes to those protections. Nathan Newcomer, SEACC’s Tongass campaigner, said the group stepped in after learning the Forest Service had no plans to hold its own public meetings. …The Forest Service is expected to publish a draft environmental impact statement on the roadless rule — a step that would open a formal public comment period. Newcomer said that the window is expected to last 30 days and could begin as soon as late April.
New research suggests that in just 15 years, the causes of most tree loss have flipped from human hands to a handful of natural causes. University of Vermont researchers studied forests in 18 states: in 2009, human harvesting accounted for most tree loss, but by 2024, pests, diseases, and other “natural” causes activities were causing far more tree loss. They compared nearly 324,000 records of tree mortality across 18 states and almost 62,000,000 hectares, from the federal Forest Inventory and Analysis dataset from 2009 to 2024. In 2009, human harvesting caused a bit more tree loss than natural causes. Fifteen years later, tree loss from natural causes was outpacing harvest-caused loss by nearly 40%, and overall tree loss also increased by nearly 16% during this period. It wasn’t a change the researchers were looking for. 
BOSTON — Urban forestry is a noble and necessary pursuit, yielding environmental and health benefits almost too numerous to count. …Urban forests, broadly speaking, also happen to be sources of large amounts of wood waste. The most recent estimates from the USDA Forest Service indicate that 46 million tons of sellable wood from urban areas is felled each year, most of which gets chipped, landfilled, or burned for energy. There is a missed opportunity afoot; not one of those pathways—with the possible exception of biomass power generation—involves making something of tangible value that’s inversely proportional to the amount of waste being generated. …Tridome Structures, a Massachusetts-based manufacturer of mass timber products, saw the gap in the Northeast market and acted accordingly. Only six months ago, the company opened a subsidiary mill operation called TimberWise in the town of Millis, a Boston suburb.
January’s ice storm stressed out trees, making it harder for them to ward off disease and insects. It may have also created an environment where species of pine bark beetles that have been documented for centuries, especially ips and southern pine beetles, can flourish and attack vulnerable evergreens. “You can go from having just a few trees that are damaged or killed by the beetles to having acres damaged or killed by beetles if you’re not really monitoring that,” said Garron Hicks, Assistant Forest Management Chief with the Mississippi Forestry Commission. “Unfortunately, often when landowners notice evidence of the beetle, it’s too late for that tree.” That’s especially true for pine trees whose needles have already begun to turn brown or red. …Hicks urges landowners especially in north Mississippi, the region hit hardest by the winter storm, to look out for signs of beetle damage like pitch tubes.
