Climate change has resulted in extreme fire weather. Fire seasons in USA are getting longer and wildfires are spreading faster and burning hotter than anyone can remember. Last year was the largest fire season in more than 50 years, with more than 4 million hectares burned. Since 2000 was record fires in many states, including a fire in Arizona that burned 215,000 hectares; a fire in Texas that burned 360,000 hectares; and a fire in Alaska that burned 520,000 hectares. More than half a million hectares.
For the first time in more than a century, the United States is facing a net forest loss.
Over the last 10 years, the average area of land harvested in Canada’s forests has totaled an astonishing 1.8 million acres annually — an area half the size of Connecticut — with 1.7 million acres of that harvest done via clearcutting (the removal of most or all trees from a given area). Looking specifically at Canada’s boreal forest — with most logging taking place in Quebec, Ontario, and Alberta — more than one million acres are clearcut annually, representing more than 60% of the forest that is cleared each year across the country.
In Australia an area about the size of South Korea, roughly 25.5 million acres, has burned. More than 1 billion mammals, birds, and reptiles likely lost their lives in the blazes, according to one estimate from the University of Sydney. Around 25,000 koalas were feared dead on Kangaroo Island. Eight thousand koalas, a third of all the koalas in New South Wales, are believed to have perished, and about 30 percent of the koalas’ habitat has also been wiped out. The devastation only adds to existing pressures on Australia’s unique ecosystems. The continent is home to 244 species that are not found anywhere else. The region also has the highest rate of native mammals becoming extinct over the past 200 years.
The more land burns, the more carbon dioxide gets released into the atmosphere, and the more trees — which act as natural carbon sinks — disappear. Already, Australia's fires have released 350 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. That's roughly 1% of the total global carbon emissions from 2019.