Canada's Boreal Forest: Too Remote to Burn, Too Remote to Manage

The boreal zone in Canada stretches 5.5 million square kilometers from Yukon to Newfoundland and Labrador, covering more than three-quarters of the country's total forest area. It's part of a larger circumpolar band that rings the Northern Hemisphere, but Canada holds 24% of the world's entire boreal forest, more than any other country.

By the numbers: It's one of only five major forest regions on Earth still largely intact, alongside the Russian boreal, the Amazon, the Congo basin, and the rainforests of Borneo and New Guinea.

The boreal zone is home to just 3.7 million people worldwide, mostly in remote, rural communities. A landscape that size with that few people is part of why managing remote forests is so challenging.

Boreal fires

Boreal forests are fire-adapted ecosystems. Species like black spruce depend on periodic burns to regenerate, and fire has shaped the landscape for thousands of years.

But scale and frequency are shifting. Canada is warming at roughly twice the global average, and hotter, drier conditions are turning the natural cycle of boreal forests into something more destructive.

Wildfire stats: Canada's 2023 wildfire season burned an estimated 15 million hectares, more than double the previous record set in 1989. About 71% of the area burned in Canada between 1990 and 2023 was ignited by lightning. In the record 2023 season, that jumped to ~93%, meaning the fires driving the worst damage started in remote areas, not near roads or communities.

Only about one-fifth of Canada's total burned area from 1986 to 2023 fell within actively managed forest tenure. The rest burned in remote land with no timber operations and no meaningful suppression effort, because none was in place to begin with.

Why remoteness makes management difficult

Without road access, firefighting crews and equipment can't reach remote ignition points before a small fire becomes a megafire. The same lack of infrastructure blocks preventative work: mechanical thinning, controlled burns and pest outbreak control that would reduce fuel loads before conditions turn dangerous.

And because most boreal fires are lightning-caused in areas with no forestry operations, there's often no economic rationale to build the roads that management would require.