Wildfire

Area burned across Canada each year

Area burned each year

Wildfire is part of the boreal landscape, but the area burned varies from year to year. The long-run average is about 2.4 million hectares a year; the largest season in the record is 2023, at about 17.6 million hectares, with 2025 (8.4 million) the second-largest. The chart shows the national total each year since 1959.

The 2023 fire season, fire by fire

In 2023, reported wildfire area totalled more than 17 million hectares. That’s a total area approximately three times the size of Nova Scotia. Much of it was in Canada’s boreal forest. The map represents each fire in the dataset with a point, with marker area proportional to the reported area burned. The markers show the relative scale and location of fires, not their actual boundaries. Zoom and pan to explore your region. Many of the largest fires occurred in Quebec, the Northwest Territories, and British Columbia, while thousands of smaller fires were recorded across the country.

Wildfire smoke is also the main reason fine particulate air pollution has stopped improving in Canada. This is discussed further in Air Quality.

Download data