Wildfires are ‘what we should expect for the foreseeable future’: expert

[00:00:00]Ontario is in the middle of its worst wildfire season on record and First Nations leaders are calling for a public inquiry on the Ontario government's response.

[00:00:10]>> In the year 2026, how could this happen?

[00:00:13]More importantly, how do we make sure this never happens again? The lack of communication and evacuation support should horrify all Canadians.

[00:00:24]>> First Nation Chiefs from Northwestern Ontario voice their concerns over the province's emergency coordination.

[00:00:31]Ontario's latest numbers suggest fires have burned through more than 7,000 square kilometers of forest, breaking the previous record set in 2021. And the vast majority of those fires have burned over the past 10 days amid scorching temperatures.

[00:00:49]And for more on this, we've reached Zeb Getaloff. He's the director of the climate and ecosystem dynamics research laboratory. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.

[00:00:59]>> Thank you.

[00:01:00]>> Let's start uh Zeb with the front lines in northern Ontario. So, thousands of hectares are burning, communities have been evacuated. From a forest ecology perspective, why is this current outbreak so aggressive and difficult to contain?

[00:01:15]>> Uh well, there are two things to consider here. The first is that the boreal forest has always burned and it will always burn, but this is absolutely being compounded by climate change. The weather is just hotter now.

[00:01:28]Um the wildfire season is longer. Um uh we The science on this is not well understood yet, but it's also getting a bit windier, it seems. And so, these fires are just spreading faster.

[00:01:39]>> So, is it to be expected that this kind of spread and intensity is just the new normal?

[00:01:45]>> Well, there will be some calm years like 2022, but um no, by and large, uh with this is probably what we should expect in the foreseeable future. And and the only way The only solution to this is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

[00:01:59]>> Is there anything that Canadian authorities realistically could have done earlier this spring to prevent these specific fires from taking hold?

[00:02:09]>> Well, as Mike Harris said this morning, about half of wildfires in Canada are human-caused.

[00:02:15]Northwestern Ontario didn't get a fire ban until July 15th.

[00:02:19]And so there there probably should have been an earlier fire ban put in place.

[00:02:24]And we're definitely going to be under budgeted.

[00:02:27]We We only have $150 million budgeted for this year, and it's probably going to end up being twice that like it was last year. And what that means is that we're spending more on overtime. We don't have resources in place where they need to be at the start of the season. So there's definitely some things that could have been done. But we have one of the most effective firefighting services in the world, wildland firefighting services in the world.

[00:02:51]>> Let's expand a little bit on that point about the fire ban given this these new normal conditions that we're now having to deal with. What should the policy around fire bans be moving forward, do you think?

[00:03:04]>> I mean it It's We should be a little bit more proactive about it, be a little bit more cautious.

[00:03:11]I know people don't like being told you can't have a campfire, but people also don't like having their houses burned down.

[00:03:17]>> And And Zev, a key prevention tool often discussed is prescribed burning. So using controlled fires to clear out dry underbrush and manage fuel loads. Is that a feasible strategy across millions of hectares of remote northern forests?

[00:03:34]>> Across millions of of hectares of remote northern forests, no, it's not. We could do it a little bit around the wildland-urban interface, but this is not the way the boreal forest burns. It It's not like the ponderosa pine forests in British Columbia where you have the friendly flame that comes in and clears out the understory. It has always burned at high severity and will probably always continue to burn at high severity.

[00:03:55]>> Zev, do you think Canada needs a dedicated federal firefighting force in this era of climate-driven megafires?

[00:04:02]>> That's a really interesting problem, and it's outside my area of expertise. We We do need to get better at is coordination between the different management agencies, and we saw that in the Jasper wildfire, where there were the the the park, the municipality, and the province were working together, except that there was lack of communication, and that's probably a more widespread problem. It just was very very noticeable there.

[00:04:25]>> I wonder, Zev, what you make of these comments from President Trump saying that Canada has to be better at forest management. Is there Is there merit to what he's saying?

[00:04:37]>> No. No, we can't rake ourselves out of this problem. Um I mean, he's all worked up because of that smoke plume, but he should recall that there were large fires in northern Minnesota and Michigan that contributed to that plume, as well.

[00:04:51]>> Okay. Appreciate so much your insights this morning, Zev Gallalof. Thank you for your time.

[00:04:56]>> Thank you.

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