The boreal forest is not merely susceptible to fire – it is an ecosystem structurally designed to burn, writes Glenn McGillivray.Supplied
Glenn McGillivray is managing director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction and adjunct professor of disaster and emergency management at York University.
When the wildfires get rolling, the armchair experts get trolling.
Every summer, as smoke from Canada’s boreal forest drifts across North American skies, a familiar chorus erupts online. Amateur fire commanders take to social media with seemingly obvious solutions: Why don’t we just send in more water bombers? Why not just doze a perimeter around the fire? Why isn’t the government building access roads into the woods?
When megafires rage across millions of hectares, it is tempting to view the problem as a failure of policy, preparation or resolve. But this perspective overlooks a fundamental reality: When high-intensity crown fires get going in Canada’s northern wilderness, the sheer physics of extreme fire behaviour renders standard human suppression tactics practically useless.
Understanding why these blazes are nearly impossible to extinguish is not a story of inadequate response. It is a sobering lesson in the unyielding forces of nature, the compounding effects of climate change and the physical limits of fire management.
To understand the wildfire challenge, one must first recognize that the boreal forest is not merely susceptible to fire. It is an ecosystem structurally designed to burn. Spanning over 550 million hectares across Canada – about half of it tree-covered - the boreal landscape is overwhelmingly dominated by conifers, which are needled, and not moist green leafy trees. Under hot, dry and windy conditions, these species essentially act as standing fuel. Ever throw an old Christmas tree into a bonfire?
Far from being a tragedy for the landscape, fire is a vital evolutionary partner. Species like the lodgepole pine are explicitly adapted to fire. Their resin-sealed cones require intense heat to open, release seeds and regenerate the forest. The boreal forest does not just endure fire, it was created by it and relies on it.
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Much of the public’s frustration stems from a misunderstanding of how wildland firefighting actually works. Hollywood has popularized the image of the super-scooper dropping thousands of gallons of water directly onto a roaring inferno, instantly saving the day.
In reality, air tankers do not extinguish massive wildfires. Water and red-dyed suppressant drops are used primarily to cool down the blaze, while chemical retardants are laid ahead of a fire’s path to slow its progression and buy time. The actual work of putting out a fire falls to ground crews digging lines and extinguishing hot spots.
In the vast Canadian north, however, ground crews face an insurmountable barrier: access. As a general rule remote wildfires are usually triggered by lightning strikes, while human activity drives many of the fires that are closer to where people live, work and play. Nationally, the breakdown is about an even 50/50.
To construct a massive network of roads and bridges across thousands of miles of boggy wetlands and steep terrain to reach every remote lightning strike would be both financially and logistically astronomical, as well as ecologically absurd.
Even if every fire were accessible, the sheer volume of concurrent blazes creates a crisis of triage. On any given day during a severe season, hundreds of active wildfires burn simultaneously across the country (more than 900 are burning today).
Managing a challenge of this magnitude quickly exhausts a finite supply of specialized personnel, heavy equipment and aircraft. Transporting crews, gear and fuel into the roadless wilderness creates severe logistical bottlenecks. Furthermore, because climate change is lengthening fire seasons worldwide, neighbouring provinces and international partners are increasingly tied up with their own emergencies, limiting the availability of mutual aid.
When resources are stretched thin, fire management agencies must make tough tactical decisions. They practice strategic triage, directing firefighters and aircraft to protect high-value targets, specifically human lives, critical infrastructure and communities along the wildland-urban interface, while often leaving remote fires to burn unmanaged until weather patterns shift.
Proactive measures like prescribed burns, cultural burning by Indigenous peoples and mechanical fuel clearing are invaluable tools around vulnerable communities. But scaling these interventions across hundreds of millions of hectares to prevent megafires presents insurmountable regulatory, financial and operational hurdles.
The battle against massive boreal crown fires cannot be won through brute force.
Recognizing the limits of human intervention is not an admission of defeat; it is a prerequisite for sensible policy. Rather than demanding that crews conquer nature’s most violent blazes, we must focus our resources strategically where they matter most, safeguarding human lives and communities while allowing the boreal forest to carry out its ancient, necessary cycles.