Today's Edition
MONTREAL (AFP)
Canada's wildfires have burned more than 13.6 million acres (5.5 million hectares) this year, officials said as the country endures one of its most destructive fire seasons.
That is still well behind the record fire season in 2023, when more than 6,000 fires burned more than 15 million hectares of land, AFP reported.
In 2023, Canada's worst-ever fire season, 42.9 million acres of land were scorched, an extraordinary scale of damage that focused international attention on the growing threat of wildfires boosted by human-induced climate change.
Canada has counted some 3,000 wildfires in 2025, with 561 burning as of Friday, according to official figures.
"This is one of the highest cumulative areas burned for this time of year, behind the record setting fire season of 2023," an official with Canada's natural resources ministry, Michael Norton, told reporters.
In recent years, Canada has experienced warming at least twice as fast as the rest of the globe.
Linked to climate change, rising temperatures lead to reduced snow, shorter and milder winters, and earlier summer conditions that are conducive to fires, experts say.
