"In Canada, temperatures have increased by more than one degree Celsius, and in the north, where those fires are having huge consequences, many of those areas have warmed more than two degrees Celsius."

"Doing those improvements [suppression and Indigenous burning practices] isn't going to stop wildfires."

"We are going to be living with more and more fire on our landscape."

Lori Daniels, professor of forest and conservation sciences, University of British Columbia

 

"Thinning and prescribed burning helps us with some particularly problematic components of that fuel equation."

"[Instead of doing what's needed], the fuels have just continued to accumulate [for lack of budgets, commercial markets, liability concerns and insufficient numbers of trained professionals]."

John Bailey, associate forestry professor, Oregon State University 

 

"There are ways that we're having to pay that debt [of tardy forest management]: We're getting bigger fires, more extreme fires, a lot of smoke."

"If we want to pay down the debt, we have to invest in restoration." 

"Even if Canada was doing everything right with climate change, there are things that are going to burn hotter and more aggressively than they used to."

Robert Bonnie, former undersecretary for Farm Production and Conservation, U.S Department of Agriculture

 

"The United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air."

"[This is] wilful negligence. [Canada is] not properly maintaining [its forests]."

U.S. President Donald J. Trump 

Firefighters and first responders wait in line for dinner at the Spokane County Fair and Expo Center which is being utilized as a base camp for firefighters on August 5, 2026 in Spokane, Washington. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

 

Wildfires are ablaze in Washington State, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, California and Utah, placing communities, building infrastructures and residential homes -- not to mention the firefighters dispatched to fight those blazes, at high risk. In Canada too, there are wildfires in Ontario, Quebec and the Northwest Territories, and the worst-hit of the Canadian provinces, British Columbia. Smoke wafts everywhere, a threat to human health. Just as the smoke from Quebec and Ontario wildfires float over to the northern U.S. States, smoke from wildfires in Colorado, Oregon and Washington State waft over to British Columbia.

 

Smoke from Canadian boreal forest fires swept into the United States, resulting in air quality alerts for over 120 million Americans. Air quality in New York and Chicago was heavily compromised with smog blanketing their regions. Canada was accused by four Republican lawmakers of failing to prevent wildfire smoke from covering areas in the United States; that "continued inaction" was "unacceptable", they huffed in concert with President Trump's fuming condemnations. 

 

 

 

The U.S. President threatened new levies once again, this time imposed as punishment for the smoke Canada has allowed to drift over the U.S. He more recently announced the finalization of his plan to punish Canada for the smoke. This interpretation of natural events has forest management experts declaring the oversimplification of a complicated problem by the Trump administration. Robert Bonnie, for one, points out that the president's own decision-making has cut Forest Service capacity and  resources, under-investing in fire prevention and restoration.

 

Despite that both countries are facing similar fire pressures, Canada's forests are for the most part public lands that provinces and territories manage. There are far more private forestlands in the United States, with a fragmented federal-state system prevailing. And, as Lori Daniels of the University of British Columbia points out, both countries make use of similar suppression tools even while Canada has far more forest, fewer people and remote boreal areas where wildfires ignited by lightning can be dreadfully difficult to reach.

 

Residents look toward the Bald Range wildfire. (Jay Bertagnolli/CBC)

 

Thinning and prescribed burns are fundamental to fuel management in forests; reducing ladder and surface fuels to make it more difficult for fires to reach up to the mass of forest crowns, spreading the fires with the help of prevailing winds. "Thinning and prescribed burning helps us with some particularly problematic components of that fuel equation", pointed out Oregon State University's John Bailey.

 

The U.S., he points out, has been tardy to adapt that methodology at the required pace and scale, partially as a result of weak commercial markets for small-diameter wood, along with local and state smoke rules. "The fuels have just continued to accumulate", as a result, he added. Both countries, points out Lori Daniels, must move toward forest management, reflecting the hotter drier conditions of today's natural environment. 

 

The areas so susceptible to wildfires have seen multi-year droughts, and since Indigenous burning practices were banned while suppression took its place as the dominant policy, forests grew denser. "I don't think the problem is forest management. I think the problem is climate", stated Jonathan Boucher, researcher at the Canadian Forest Service. While he agrees that thinning out trees, adding fuel breaks, conducting prescribed burning, and producing defensible spaces near communities can be of help, they would not stop every fire. 

 

BCWS crews battling the Bald Range wildfire overnight.  Photo: BCWS

 

"Our agencies work together. We're going to throw smoke your way. You're going to throw smoke our way."

"Let's work together to make sure we can restore our forests in a way that we can contain this problem going forward."

Robert Bonnie, associate forestry professor, Oregon State University