The United States and Canada are fighting for who is to blame for forest fires

While fatal forest fires raged in the Canadian province of Manitoba this summer, republican legislators in neighboring US states have written letters asking Canada to be held responsible for smoke drift to the south.

“Our skies are stifled by the smoke of forest fires that we have not started and that we cannot control,” wrote Calvin Callahan, a representative of the republican state of Wisconsin, in a letter dated early August.

Callahan, as well as the legislators of Iowa, Minnesota and Northern Dakota, have filed an official complaint with the American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) urging an investigation into the management of forest fires in Canada.

The Prime Minister of Manitoba, Wab Kinew, quickly condemned the move, accusing legislators of throwing a “wood criterion” and of playing “political games”.

In August, forest fires had burned more than two million acres in Manitoba, forced thousands of people to evacuate and killed two people – a married couple who, according to the authorities, was trapped by fast flames around their family home.

While September is coming to an end, the data shows that 2025 is on the right track to be the first time of the forest fire season in Canada.

A study published in The Natural Journal in September revealed that smoke from Canada Forest Fires also had large -scale deadly consequences. He believes that forest fires 2023 – The worst of the country registered by the burned area – caused more than 87,500 acute and premature deaths worldwide, including 4,100 acute deaths linked to smoke in the United States and more than 22,000 premature deaths in Europe.

Forest fire smoke contains PM2.5 – a type of air pollution – which is known to trigger inflammation in the body. It can exacerbate conditions such as asthma and heart disease and, in certain causes, can damage neural connections in the brain.

“These are big numbers,” said Michael Brauer, professor at the University of British Columbia who co-wrote the study. He added that the results showing that forest fire smoke should be treated as a serious health problem, similar to breast cancer or prostate cancer.

For some American legislators, the blame falls downright on Canada.

“The inability of Canada to contain massive forest fires,” wrote Callahan in August, “said the health and quality of life of more than 20 million Americans in the Midwest.”

Could their complaints raise the question: could Canada do more to curb its forest fires – and by extension, their smoke?

Climate and fire experts in both countries told the BBC that the answer was largely not.

“Until we, as a global society, deals with human-based climate change, we will have this problem,” said Mike Flannigan, emergency management expert and fire science at Thompson Rivers in British Columbia.

The metrics show that Canada forest fires, a natural part of its vast boreal forest, have worsened in recent years. The fire season now starts earlier, ends later and burns more land on average. The 2023 fires have shaved 15 million hectares (37 million acres) – an area larger than England – while the 2025 flames have so far burned 8.7 million hectares (21.5 million acres).

In mid-September, there are more than 500 fires, mainly in British Columbia and Manitoba, according to the Canadian Interinstitutions Forest Center.

About half of Canada forest fires are launched by lightning, while the rest comes from human activity, according to data from the National Forestry Database. Experts warn that warmer temperatures make the dryer and more subject to ignition.

Forest fires are not only aggravated in Canada. The United States has recently seen some of its most damaging shadows, including Hawaii forest fires 2023 which killed at least 102 people, and the palisades fire in January, the most destructive in the history of Los Angeles.

The two countries had trouble keeping pace, often sharing fire fighting resources. Canadian water bombers were deployed in California this year, while more than 600 American firefighters traveled north to help Canada, US Forest Service.

In Canada, tense resources – and worsening of fires – fueled a national fire -fighting service. The emergency response of forest fires is currently treated separately by each of the provinces and territories.

“The system we have right now worked 40 years ago. Today? Not so much,” said Flannigan.

Others offer controlled burns, a practice used in Australia and by indigenous communities, as a solution, although these fires would always generate smoke. Some people argue for better compensation for flammable materials in forests and near cities, or invest in new technologies that can help detect forest fires faster.

Some of these works are already underway. In August, Canada promised more than $ 47 million for research projects to help communities better prepare and mitigate forest fires.

However, experts like Jen Beverly, Wildland fire professor at the University of Alberta, warn that few Canada can do to completely prevent forest fires.

“These are high intensity fire ecosystems in Canada, she said, are different from fires in Australia or the United States. “We have very difficult fires to manage in extreme conditions, and we see more because of climate change.”

With a warmer climate, Professor Beverly said attention should be paid to pollution. She noted that the United States was the second largest carbon issuer in the world behind China. “I mean, we should blame them for the problem,” she said.

In recent months, the Trump administration has also returned the environmental policies designed to reduce emissions and removed the United States from the Paris climate agreements.

Sheila Olmstead, professor of environmental policy at Cornell University, noted that Canada and the United States had history of pollution and climate cooperation, including an air quality agreement signed by the two in 1991 to combat acid rain.

“It was a very clear setting to solve the problem, and that’s what seems to be missing here,” Olmstead told the BBC. The two countries, she said, would benefit from working together on forest fires instead of negotiating the blame.

As for the complaint of the EPA, we do not know what the agency could do to respond to the concerns of the American legislators. In a declaration to the BBC, the EPA said it examined it “and would respond through appropriate channels.”

Professor Brauer said that data from his study show that even if fires are burning in Canada – often in remote areas – their impact can go far beyond.

The conclusions, he said, the BBC, calls for redirecting the way in which the consequences of climate change are included.

“The effects of a warmer climate are located, and there are winners and losers,” said Professor Brauer. “But it is an illustration that some of these impacts become global.”

He argued that the complaints of the American legislators are an “unhappy distraction” and that the emphasis should rather be placed on collaboration and learning to “live with smoke”.

“This thing does not disappear,” said Professor Brauer, adding that there are ways to avoid future deaths if there is a desire to adapt.