Wildfire seasons in Canada are becoming longer, larger, and more destructive, according to a sixty-year examination of fire records conducted by the federal Canadian Forest Service.

The research indicates that this pattern is not due to an increase in fire frequency but rather a decline in the number of wildfires, with fewer but more expansive fires consuming greater areas than before, confirming a trend federal experts noted years earlier.

In 2019, researchers from Natural Resources Canada released a study suggesting that wildfire activity had been steadily increasing nationwide since the mid-20th century, influenced by rising temperatures and prolonged fire seasons.

At that time, the trend was inconsistent: some areas exhibited significant increases in burned land, while others were stable or even decreasing. Fires caused by human activity were believed to be declining, reflecting years of preventive measures, and despite their growth, the largest wildfires had not yet dominated the national landscape.

The latest study, published in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research, extends this analysis to 2024, incorporating enhanced satellite imagery and nine additional fire seasons, including some of the worst on record like 2021, 2023, and 2024.

The findings reveal that the area affected by wildfires is climbing across nearly all Canadian eco-zones, including the Pacific Northwest and Atlantic Canada, which were previously seen as lower risk due to moist conditions but are now displaying stable or increasing fire patterns.

Additionally, the study demonstrates that the largest wildfires are responsible for a greater share of the destruction, and while lightning remains the primary cause of most wildfires, incidents caused by humans have begun to rise again since the early 2000s — a change the authors attribute not to failures in policy but to hotter, drier conditions that make ignitions more difficult to manage.

"I believe the rise in human-induced fires, particularly the larger ones, is due to drier fuels," stated Chelene Hanes, a research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service at Natural Resources Canada's Great Lakes Forestry Centre in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.

Hanes is the principal author of both the 2019 and 2025 national evaluations investigating long-term shifts in Canada's wildfire patterns.

She noted that the largest fires now reach an intensity where traditional firefighting strategies are limited, obliging teams to concentrate on controlling and safeguarding rather than extinguishing the fire completely.

Hanes remarked that the effects of the largest wildfire incidents are becoming more evident on a national level.

"They're responsible for a greater share of the burned areas because everything is extremely dry," she explained.

The patterns Hanes describes are no longer theoretical data points but have continuously manifested in recent wildfire seasons throughout the nation.

In July 2021, wildfires fueled by extreme heat and record temperatures ravaged British Columbia, particularly destroying the village of Lytton, which had just noted Canada's highest recorded temperature at 49.6 C.

The 2023 wildfire season was widely characterized as the most intense in Canadian history, scorching over 15 million hectares and causing large-scale evacuations and significant smoke issues across Canada and into the United States.

In 2024, a wildfire in Jasper National Park in Alberta led to the evacuation of around 25,000 individuals, destroyed hundreds of structures, and became one of the most costly disasters in the country that year.

Impact of wildfires on boreal forest wildlife

The transformation in the wildfire landscape is also being felt within Canada's insurance sector, which warns that increasing wildfire risk is altering loss patterns, premiums, and long-term housing choices nationwide.

"We assign risk pricing as an industry, and we have seen a rise in natural disaster risk throughout Canada — especially in high-risk wildfire zones," Liam McGuinty, vice-president of federal affairs at the Insurance Bureau of Canada, stated.

McGuinty noted that from 2005 to 2014, insurance losses from wildfires in Canada averaged about $70 million per year, but in the last decade, this average has surged closer to $750 million — marking a 1,000 percent increase in just over ten years.

The industry is responding by adjusting its pricing for coverage in the most vulnerable communities, resulting in higher premiums or alterations to policies as companies manage their overall risk.

"Our role is to assess risk," McGuinty explained, adding that in regions with heightened wildfire exposure, insurers have had to implement "changes to insurance policies."

He stressed that wildfire coverage still forms part of a standard home insurance policy in Canada and that such coverage is "widely accessible," further clarifying, "This isn't a California-type situation at all," in reference to major insurers ceasing to write or renew policies in high-risk wildfire areas of the state after repeated catastrophic losses.