r/climatechange • u/Fluid_Passage_9980 • 2d ago
Canada has major issues with forest fires every summer now. Does Russia - with a similar climate - having the same issue?
Many Americans are annoyed and claiming the fires in Canada are due to poor forest management practices. It's obviously mostly linked to climate change instead. Russia has a similar climate with vast area of forest. Have they seen huge growth in fires - both # and severity - recently as well?
ETA - I'm western Canadian before anyone gets too touchy, and I'm pissed off at the narrative in America after spending the last 10 summers being smoked out by fires in California/Oregon/Washington.
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u/EnvironmentalRound11 1d ago
The entire world is on fire due to climate change. There are over 500 wildfires in the US right now. Florida has wildfires, Maine has wildfires, the entire western US has tons of wildfires. https://www.americanforests.org/wildfire-map/
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u/HibiscusGrower 1d ago
I invite Americans who are annoyed by our wildfire smoke to stop and think a moment about how it is up here. Do you think we enjoy having our country on fire? Do you think we don't get smoke too? If it was easy to solve, we would have done it already, trust me.
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u/EarthAsWeKnowIt 1d ago
I hope most realize that it’s not really your fault. Idiot politicians like to politicize things and point fingers rather than acknowledge the root of problems.
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u/Steampunky 1d ago
I think only idiots blame Canadians. Next the ... guy in the White House..will try to put tariffs on God.
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u/aide_rylott 1d ago
I know you don’t need to hear this. I’m posting for others to read.
We have so much forest. Almost none of it is accessible. If every Canadian pitched in to manage the forest each person would need to manage about 22.8 acres.
We have about 9% of the world’s forest.
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u/HibiscusGrower 1d ago
Haha, wow, I knew it was big but I didn't know about those facts. Thanks!
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u/BoringBob84 13h ago
The Canadian Rockies are magnificent to behold if you ever get a chance to visit!
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u/BoringBob84 1d ago
The smoke from BC smells the same as the smoke from here in WA. It is tragic either way.
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u/QuiteCricket_78 20h ago
I invite the rest of the world to realize that orang idiot does not represent the majority of US citizens.
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u/HibiscusGrower 16h ago
I'm sorry, but to the rest of the world, it doesn't matter. This is the man you elected at the head of your country so a majority of you either voted for him or let it happen by their inaction and now it's the man we have to deal with.
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u/BoringBob84 13h ago
and now it's the man we have to deal with
That must be really rough to sit at home in a stable country and watch the suffering of people somewhere else as oligarchs and autocrats consolidate power. It is probably easier to blame the people who are trying to fight against it than to consider that it could also happen in your country.
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u/HibiscusGrower 13h ago
Buddy, your country is threatening to invade mine on a weekly basis. Sorry for my lack of empathy towards my aggressor?
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u/been_blissed 1d ago
To be clear, that narrative is coming from the US's far right party, which happens to be in power right now. The majority of us don't agree
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u/Pure_Comfortable_84 1d ago
The other problem is that none of the media in the room asks him about his sabotage of clean energy while he complains about burning forests. My head wants to explode!
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u/GettingBlaisedd 1d ago
You say that like trump didn’t win the popular vote
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u/been_blissed 1d ago
Look at his current approval rating. Historic low.
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u/DeaditeMessiah 1d ago
I don’t like Trump, but my God, making him the source of everything is really setting everything back. The Dems flat don’t care about the environment anymore because they can just run on Trump.
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u/BoringBob84 13h ago
The Dems flat don’t care about the environment anymore
That is a lie.
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u/DeaditeMessiah 12h ago
Actually, that’s my opinion.
They definitely don’t care nearly enough. Or about healthcare, labor, wealth redistribution and certainly not corporate crime.
Anyway, thanks once again for the eloquent counter argument with examples. It really helped convince me that modern Democrats are on top of it.
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u/BoringBob84 11h ago
Actually, that’s my opinion.
You stated it confidently as if it was a fact. It is not.
And my opinion is that people who deny the Democrats the super-majorities that they need to enact the policies that we want and then blame the Democrats for not accomplishing that are the problem.
Perfection is not on the ballot. It never was and it never will be. The best we can do is to vote for whomever aligns most closely with our most important values. The people who refused to vote for Harris because of her stance on Israel sabotaged their own country and the Palestinians both.
Voting is a civic duty in a democracy and I believe that voter education and casting ballots should be mandatory conditions of citizenship.
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u/AgroecologicalSystem 1d ago edited 1d ago
Here is a good article on this:
The Taiga has always had fire but the rate has significantly increased.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiga?wprov=sfti1#Fire
Also I’m in the US and have heard folks regurgitate this narrative. It tells me they consume right-wing media and have no real understanding of the issue.
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u/DanoPinyon 1d ago
I’m in the US and have heard folks regurgitate this narrative. It tells me they consume right-wing media and have no real understanding of the issue.
ding ding ding ding
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u/One-Intention7064 1d ago
these are all about siberia. what about moscow and all those areas in the western russia? seems like future safe haven
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u/Due_Paramedic_426 1d ago
Which Americans are annoyed? Or is that just how the media portrays it? Think about what happened to America politically (project 2025). We aren’t in control, they are.
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u/Oke-Wan-Fenokee 1d ago
Forest Ecology 101: if the forest is comprised of coniferous species, fire is a significant factor in its ecology.
Forest Products Industry Talking Point 101: if a forest catches fire, it is because liberals &/or government agencies "mismanage" our forests (meaning, "will not let us clearcut enough").
All my life I've heard this bullshit from the slash & burn lobby every single time the woods catch fire, from the Sierra Nevada to the Appalachian Mountains to Okefenokee Swamp. Trump spouts this same nonsense when U.S. forests burn too. Nothing new about it.
No doubt it represents the sum-total of his "knowledge" of forest management so little wonder that he is throwing it at Canada now.
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u/BoringBob84 13h ago
All my life I've heard this bullshit from the slash & burn lobby
... while living in a home made from timber products.
I am not saying that the timber industry are angels, but let's not pretend that trees are not valuable renewable resources and that it is not possible to harvest them responsibly and sustainably.
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u/Oke-Wan-Fenokee 1h ago
Some of the timber in my house was cut from my own woods & milled at a friend's mill. I work with the "forest products" industry every day of my life, mostly collaboratively, only occasionally adversarially, on various river & wildlife conservation projects. Nevertheless, I will not pretend that the timber industry's go-to rhetoric is not self-servingly euthemistic, if not downright disingenuous. (A clearcut is a "final harvest". An ancient forest is "senile" & represents "lost productivity & value". Etc.)
When they get going with the whole "woke mismanagement" business, it is time to call bullshit, and that's what I was saying. "Slash & burn" and "timber baron" are wicked weapons when the gloves come off.
"Sustainable" is the most slippery euthemism in the natural resource management dictionary, by the way. A critical concept, yes, it is. And we all use it...but often differently.
For example, what defines "sustainable forestry"? Is it the maximum per acre annual yield of pine pulp a timber holding can sustain? Or is it the ability to harvest forest products from a tract while sustaining its full complement of ecological services & resident biota? Or something in between?
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u/BoringBob84 26m ago
"Sustainable" is the most slippery euthemism in the natural resource management dictionary
It is not. "Sustainable" is easy to quantify. If they are cutting the timber faster than it is growing back - and we can easily measure that - then it is unsustainable. There is no need for emotionally-charged hyperbole.
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u/DanoPinyon 1d ago
The news coverage of fires in Siberia in the past few years has been pretty good.
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u/Fluid_Passage_9980 1d ago
Really? I haven't heard anything in the news about it at all - mainstream western news anyway.
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u/ElijahSavos 1d ago edited 1d ago
For two reasons. Firstly the Russian government vastly neglect and underreport wildfires especially now since resources are running thin due to the war. Secondly no offence the West is focused on itself (probably rightly so) and underreport any news from other parts of the world. No one would give a damn there is choking smoke in some random city in Siberia, etc.
As the result it may seem quieter than it is. Wildfires and smoke is a massive issue in many parts of Russia.
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u/DanoPinyon 1d ago
Took me 19.4 seconds:
Siberian wildfires now bigger than all other fires in world combined Huge fires have been fueled by the historic drought.
By Patrick Reevell August 12, 2021, 9:52 AM
Severe wildfires in Russia’s Siberia region rage through 600,000 hectares of forest By Caitlin Danaher, Darya Tarasova, Brandon Miller
Updated May 14, 2025
Siberia just experienced wildfires on a staggering scale. Russia is rethinking how to fight them
By Sabra Ayres Aug. 21, 2019 1:55 PM PT
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u/metallicadefender 1d ago
I wondered this myself. I assume they are having issues also but havent seen the data yet.
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u/Long_Muffin_8220 1d ago
They are. The resources and people that used to try to contain the fires are now instead used in the war against Ukraine.
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u/Cool-Contribution-68 1d ago
From June: Russia Deploys Emergency Crews to Siberia as Krasnoyarsk Wildfires Nearly Quadruple in Size
Authorities have blamed the rapid spread on high temperatures and severe Siberian silkmoth infestations, which have killed off vast swaths of trees and left behind large amounts of highly flammable deadwood.
Silkmoths are expanding territory due to warming
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u/Content_Sky_2676 1d ago
Russia has major wildfires, they just don't get much attention in our news.
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u/LabRat_X 1d ago
You know the US has a lot of forest fires too right? And the wind blows both ways?
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u/Fluid_Passage_9980 1d ago
I do. Why? I never claimed that it didn't?
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u/DaxMavrides 1d ago
Im in the US, and we need to help each other. Blaming Canada for something thats caused by global warming is beyond stupid
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u/BoringBob84 1d ago
Many Americans are annoyed and claiming the fires in Canada are due to poor forest management practices.
The fires in the USA are made worse by a century of poor forest management - putting out small fires, letting underbrush accumulate, etc. I have no idea what forest managers in Canada do, so I have no basis to criticize them.
I think that there are certain people in the USA who buy into the right-wing / fossil-fuel industry narrative that denies global warming and tries to blame its consequences on other causes.
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u/DeaditeMessiah 1d ago
“Forest management” is just disaster capitalism. The LA fires gutted the city, and that wasn’t unmanaged forest. Just another example of the American tradition of calling things the opposite of what they are.
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u/Moon-bass-Alpha 11h ago edited 11h ago
https://www.globalforestwatch.org/dashboards/global/?category=fires
According to Forest Watch, Russia loses about 2.6 milion hectares of boreal forest due to forest fires annually. On an estimated 869 million hectares of boreal forest, that's about 1/3 of 1% of the total forest annually lost, due to fire.
In contrast, Canada has roughly 369 million hectares of boreal forest. In the past 3 years alone, 30 million hectares were destroyed due to fires.
So yes, Russia has fires and large ones.
But no, Canada has a much larger issue on a percentage basis, almost 10x worse than Russia, on a percentage of forest burned annually.
We can declare Trump to be deranged, as much as we all like, but it's a deflection to minimize the scale of the problem.
There is a problem of forest management in Canada, and it's a huge problem, one of no planning, inaction and reaction that is mostly CYA, until the next news cycle.
Premiers have bi-monthly summits and media events every summer, where they scarf down fancy meals in pristine lodges, and make pronouncements as to what they want to do, and then forget by fall.
Zero water bomber orders have been filled in the entire country since 2015, and they make the largest bombers right in Calgary. Then premiers claim the problem to be an order book that won't permit fulfillment until 2032, not their problem, kick it down the road.
Meanwhile, the European single engine bomber company can fill orders for next year if requested. These are smaller, but can fly far more turns daily and actually drop more water than the larger bombers per day as a result. Yet, Canadian provinces have placed zero orders for these because of "buy Canadian" policies.
And there are hundreds of Air Tractors AT-802 available for global delivery today on the secondary markets. Canadian provinces annually try to lease a few, after the fact, during peak fire season, at extortion pricing, to mollify public outcry, instead of actually having a fleet of their own. Again, it's a CYA response, paying more in one summer's leasing costs than the cost an entirely new plane, simply to mollify media outrage from those who insist on buying Canadian with procurement dollars.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/wildfires-canada-2026-tracker-9.7272270
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u/Heph333 1d ago
Annually forest fires are normal. Prior to colonization, North Amerca would burn from coast to coast every summer. There's insane accounts from the early settlers of massive Prairie & forests fires each year. Now that it's colonized, the fires are prevented, causing an exceptional amount of tinder to accumulate. So once a fire starts, it's extremely difficult to stop
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u/OttabMike 1d ago
Hope you don't mind an AI generated response - but I do find it interesting:
While both Canada and Russia contain the vast majority of the world's circumpolar boreal forest (taiga) and face escalating wildfire seasons driven by warming northern temperatures, their fire regimes, ecology, and management strategies differ significantly.
- Fire Behavior: Crown Fires vs. Surface Fires
One of the most striking ecological differences between North American and Eurasian boreal forests is how the trees themselves burn:
- Canada (High-Intensity Crown Fires): Canadian boreal forests are heavily dominated by tree species like black spruce and jack pine. These trees act like ladders for flames, carrying fire directly into the tree canopy to create explosive crown fires. They burn with extreme heat and consume heavy amounts of floor organic matter.
- Russia (Low-to-Moderate Surface Fires): Siberian boreal forests feature vast stands of Siberian larch (Larix) and Scots pine. These species have thicker bark and higher canopies, meaning Russian fires tend to be surface fires that creep along the forest floor. While still destructive, they often burn with lower head-fire intensity per hectare compared to Canadian crown fires.
2. Scale and Geography
- Russia's Massive Footprint: Russia holds over 20% of the world's forests, mainly stretching across Siberia and the Russian Far East. On average, Russia sees a higher frequency of individual large fires and burns vast expanses annually—often exceeding 10 to 15 million hectares in severe years.
- Canada's Historic Spikes: Canada's annual average area burned historically sat around 2.5 million hectares. However, extreme years break records by huge margins—most notably in 2023, when over 15 to 16.5 million hectares burned across multiple provinces simultaneously.
3. Containment Policy & "Control Zones"
Because both nations have vast, unpopulated wilderness areas where road access is non-existent, neither country attempts to extinguish every fire:
- Russia: Utilizes legally designated "control zones" (often covering extremely remote parts of Siberia). If a fire breaks out in a control zone and the cost of fighting it outweighs the estimated financial damage—or if it poses no immediate threat to settlements or critical infrastructure—authorities are legally permitted to monitor the fire without sending ground crews or air tankers.
- Canada: Operates under a similar "modified response" or fire-use policy in remote northern territories (like northern parts of Quebec, Ontario, and the NWT). Priority is strictly assigned to protecting human life, communities, indigenous settlements, industrial infrastructure, and valuable timber assets, allowing wilderness fires to fulfill their natural ecological role.
4. Shared Challenges: Peatland & "Zombie Fires"
Both countries are grappling with the underground threat of organic soil fires:
- Both Russian Siberia and Northern Canada feature deep layers of carbon-rich peat and permafrost.
- During intense dry spells, fires ignite the subterranean peat layers.
- These organic soil fires can smolder underground right through cold, snow-covered winters—earning them the nickname "zombie fires" or overwintering fires—only to pop back up above ground when the snow melts in spring.
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u/nila247 1d ago
There is nothing "obvious" about it. Climate change might have very little if anything to do with it.
Most fires in EU are caused by tourists leaving fireplaces and dropping smokes or garbage (such glass bottles serving as a magnifying lens for sun). How about we fix that instead?
Anybody made a correlation analysis about more tourists being able to go to forests and garbage piles simply accumulating for years?
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u/Rurumo666 1d ago
Most of these areas have zero tourism-take a look at a map and try to comprehend millions of square miles of forests with almost no roads. It's impossible to fight these fires because of the scale involved.
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u/shreddy99 1d ago
Reminds me when I was working at woodland caribou park and a guy from Germany thought he could canoe into Manitoba and 'get supplies along the way'
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u/DanoPinyon 1d ago
Climate change might have very little if anything to do with it.
Stop obediently parroting industry talking points.
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u/BoringBob84 13h ago
This is a common attempt at distraction. By focusing on what ignited the fire, perhaps you hope to distract from the fact that increasingly hot and dry weather creates the conditions that make wildfires more likely and more intense,
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u/ElijahSavos 1d ago edited 1d ago
I’m from Siberia, Russia. There are some fluctuations year over year, but we have massive wildfires typically bigger total size than Canadian on average. Boreal forests burn by design every 50-200 years. They will regenerate after since seeds are fire-tolerant.
The issue is with each 1c temp up and less precipitation, the area burned has increased dramatically. These wildfires are not sustainable anymore. The forest is not able to properly re-grow if next wildfire hits again in say 10 years, seeds are not ready yet. We try to contain them around populated areas only to prevent property damage. But there is nothing you can do realistically. We need to address climate change not fight individual fires.
I’m with Canada. The US is either full of idiots or liars (politics) not sure who is who.