Plant or not to plant, and who pays to replant after wildfires?
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PRINCE GEORGE – Canada’s forests are burning faster than they can be replanted, and a national industry group is calling it a crisis, though not everyone agrees on the scale of the problem.
The Canadian Tree Nursery Association says more than 7.3 billion seedlings would be needed just to replant 15 percent of the areas burned in the last three years of record wildfires. In B.C., the situation is worsening: seedling production is expected to decline from 300 million in 2024 to 226 million by 2026.
Dr. Phil Burton, Professor Emeritus in Forest Ecology and Management at UNBC, agrees there’s a genuine problem but says the numbers need context. Millions of hectares that burned in places like the Northwest Territories were never part of the managed forest, he notes, and many forests are capable of recovering on their own.
Where the two sides do find common ground is funding. The federal Two Billion Trees program has been dismantled, and no stable long-term replacement is in place. Doug Heffner of the Canadian Tree Nursery Association says the sector can’t plan years ahead, as growing trees requires predictable investment. He points to Scandinavian countries as models for treating forest stewardship as an economic pillar rather than a one-time project.
