Canadian Wildfire Study Finds Fewer Fires but Bigger Blazes

An analysis of six decades of fire records by the Canadian Forest Service has found that Canada’s wildfire seasons are growing longer, larger, and more destructive—driven not by more frequent fires but by a smaller number of increasingly large blazes, CBC reported (1-25-26).

The study shows that while the total number of fires has not risen sharply, the largest wildfires are now burning far more land than in the past, reinforcing a trend federal scientists first identified years ago.

In 2019, fire scientists with Natural Resources Canada published research suggesting wildfire activity had increased steadily since the mid-20th century due to rising temperatures and longer fire seasons. At that time, the pattern was uneven across regions, with some areas showing higher burn totals while others appeared stable or declining. Human-caused fires were generally falling, and the largest fires had not yet come to dominate national totals.

The updated study, recently published in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research, extends the analysis through 2024 using improved satellite mapping and nine additional fire seasons, including several of the most severe on record in 2021, 2023, and 2024.

Researchers found that the area burned continues to rise across nearly all Canadian eco-zones, including the Pacific Northwest and Atlantic Canada—regions once considered lower risk due to wetter conditions. The study also found that while lightning remains the primary cause of wildfires, human-caused fires have increased again since the early 2000s, a shift the authors link to hotter, drier conditions that make more ignitions harder to control.