Europe and Canada grapple with severe wildfire seasons amid climate change

Intense, relentless heat waves and prolonged drought have triggered another severe wildfire season across Europe this summer, with crews battling massive blazes in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, the UK and even Norway.

Similar conditions have also fueled fires in the United States and Canada. For weeks, hundreds of wildfires have ripped throughout the vast boreal forest stretching from the Yukon in the north to Newfoundland in the east. As of July 24, they've wiped out at least 3.3 million hectares (8.1 million acres — an area larger than Belgium.

As toxic smoke shrouded major cities, also in the US, President Donald Trump accused Canada on social media of "not properly maintaining their Forests" and deliberately neglecting "basic Forest Management and Debris Removal."

'No one-size-fits-all' solution

While eliminating flammable fuel is part of the job for fire experts, effective management goes beyond just clearing debris. And in Canada, clearing brush from such an extensive, remote area would be impossible.

"There is no one-size-fits-all" solution, said Amy Duchelle, a senior forestry officer with the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Frequent extreme heat waves and extended droughts linked to human-caused climate change are drying out trees and undergrowth. That's fueling high-intensity fires more likely to burn out of control, said Duchelle — even in places previously too humid to burn.

Tropical forests like the Amazon region or Southeast Asia didn't evolve to coexist with fire — no thick, resistant bark or plants suited to germinate after a blaze. Here, it's crucial to stop deforestation linked to mining and agriculture, preserve the canopy and vegetation that creates the humid, fire-resistant habitat, and train people to immediately respond to any fire risk.

In Europe, management solutions can include cross-border monitoring and protection, and prioritizing fire-resistant vegetation instead of highly flammable conifers. That also means bringing back diverse tree species that contribute to more resilient forests, which have dwindled due to farming and exploitation over the centuries.

Fighting fire with fire

In some places, fire itself is key to preserving forests.

"Our boreal forest is a fire-dependent forest — it needs fire for health," said Amy Cardinal Christianson, an Indigenous Metis fire specialist in western Canada. She said a certain number of blazes are part of a natural cycle, creating natural firebreaks, stimulating fresh plant growth and restoring ecosystems — all of which can slow the spread of wildfires.

Research has shown that certain forests have evolved to live with periodic fires, which act as a sort of reset. The flames can clear the way for smaller plants struggling to compete with unchecked undergrowth, for example, and burned material also releases nutrients that enrich the soil.

But Canada's wildfire season is now accelerating the normal, healthy cycle — starting earlier, lasting longer and becoming harder to control.

It's also adding to Canada's carbon emissions: the 2023 record fire season, which wiped out five times the annual average of forestland, added 23% to the world's annual wildfire emissions. Some of the pollutants even made it as far as western Europe.

Christianson, a former research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service and now director of fire stewardship with the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, said older forest management practices ideas introduced by Europeans to support the timber industry — strict regulation, complete suppression and a focus on fast-growing monocultures — don't fit into the Canadian context.

"By excluding fire, we've actually accelerated the risk," she said, adding that periodic controlled burns can actually help reduce the risk of out-of-control infernos.

Global fire hub aims to share knowledge

Duchelle told DW how skilled pros who've dealt with forest fires for decades are now seeing blazes even they can't control — "the fire is moving too fast, the flames are too high, the heat is too intense."

Faced with these challenges, the focus has shifted from suppressing fires to reducing risk, preparing for changing conditions and building post-fire resilience. In 2023, the FAO set up the Global Fire Management Hubto help countries confronting wildfires to train and work together, sharing their knowledge.

A major focus is using new technology and data to direct monitoring and response, along with a digital platform to share information, and developing international interoperability and community-based management.

Christianson has worked with the Fire Hub to develop a network focused on Indigenous knowledge and practices, after setting up an independent network of more than 200 local guardians in Canada to help manage wildfire response.

That includes cultural burning — small, low-intensity deliberate blazes adapted to specific landscapes which help eliminate decaying organic matter in a controlled manner, protect wildfire and biodiversity and preserve local cultures.

Prescribed burns, which are generally done by government agencies, are also beneficial and have been employed for years. But they tend to be larger, and don't always take the local environment into account. They may also be done in the summer when conditions are drier, to speed up the process, increasing the risk of escape.

Cultural burning usually happens in early spring or late fall, based on snow and other environmental factors. But climate change has also shifted that schedule, and Christianson said it helps to be familiar with the landscape to notice those changes. "We usually would burn in April or May," she said of her property. "This year, I burned a bunch in February."

'Healthy landscapes' key to living with fire

Speaking with DW from her home in Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, Christianson said while the same burning practices can't always be applied across diverse cultures, they've still been able to share proven ideas and techniques internationally.

"The really cool thing about Indigenous cultural burning practices is that there's a lot of overarching similarities, a responsibility that we all feel to steward the landscape, and that fire is one of those important ways that we can do that," said Christianson, who has also introduced the practice to her daughters.

"The overall goal for most Indigenous folks that I've talked to is achieving healthy landscapes."

That means looking at the bigger picture — restoring wetlands to make an ecosystem more resilient in the face of fires, or reintroducing native species like the bison in Canada, which once numbered in the millions and help control fires by grazing on vegetation encroaching on grasslands and forests.

The practice has also recently been reintroduced in Europe, with horses and European bison in Spain and Portugal.

"A healthy landscape […] can more easily adapt to these fire events that we're seeing," said Christianson.

Amazon forest fires at historic low in 2025

One country that has seen recent success in tackling forest fires is Brazil.

"Brazil's been quite effective in bringing down not only their deforestation rate, but also the incidence of fires in the Amazon," said Duchelle, crediting cooperation between state, municipal and federal agencies and a national policy on integrated fire management. "[This success] didn't happen by accident."

In 2025, forest fires across South America's largest nation hit a historic low, burning around 12.7 million hectares, an area roughly the size of Greece.

New data from environmental monitoring network MapBiomas showed just under a quarter of the total burned area was in the Amazon rainforest, the world's largest and a key regulator of global climate. That's an 80% drop compared with 2024, and around 56% lower than the 40-year historical average.

The Cerrado savanna in central Brazil, however, where fire is part of the ecosystem, continued to burn at similar rates, due in part to prolonged drought. Experts have warned that the incoming El Nino weather pattern could bring even drier weather, amplifying the fire risk.

Edited by: Sarah Steffen