I am too. I think Canadians need to treasure their forests and should be seriously concerned by what’s happening. Our current reforestation efforts aren’t enough, and they’re largely driven to support future logging activity, not restore ecology.
The interesting graphic is the area burnt by year. If we take the years with more than 3 million hectares burnt we have some "specially hot years" falling over yearly average. This set includes:
94-95 Crimean referendum to choose between Russia or Ukraine
98 Russian financial default, start of the Yeltsin demise
Ukrainian presidential elections of 1994, 2004, 2010 and 2014 (but curiously not 2019). Would be specially interesting to check if the wildfires happened after or before the elections.
2013-2014 Euromaidan. Russia anexionates Crimea. Start of the Dombas war.
2017 This is an outlier. The year of Voronenkow saying that Crimean annexation was illegal and fleeing the Duma before to be assasinated. The year of Petya also.
We could probably add 2023 to this list at the end of the year
In the country with the second largest expatriate Ukrainian population. Most probably happened by random (and I'm surely cherry-picking) but still a curious chain of events. I assume that the data shown in this graph is correct (I could be wrong about this).
2020 is also interesting. People at home = no wildfires
17.577 million hectares have burned so far this year. If 2023 were on that graph it would be a skyscraper towering over every big fire year in the 80s and 90s.
This year is unprecedented. And it isn't even over yet and the fires are still burning.
