Americans often picture Canada as a vast northern forest – an endless expanse of pristine wilderness. But the truth is far more complex and increasingly relevant to U.S.–Canada policy debates. Eighty‑nine percent of Canada is Crown land, owned by federal or provincial governments. Yet only about 10–12% of that land receives detailed ecological monitoring.
This matters because U.S. trade policy, Canadian conservation policy, and federal herbicide permitting are now combining to reshape North America’s forests in ways few Americans recognize.
Over the past 20 years, Canada’s sawmill and pulp‑and‑paper sectors have entered a steep decline. Statistics Canada and industry reports show that mill closures have accelerated, especially in western Canada, where over 30% of softwood lumber capacity has disappeared. Employment has dropped sharply. Entire forestry towns have hollowed out.
And while multiple factors contribute – mountain pine beetle damage, wildfire losses, transportation bottlenecks – the most overlooked driver is the federal government’s long‑standing approval of spraying Roundup (glyphosate) herbicide across millions of hectares of Crown forests. For decades, glyphosate has been used to kill broadleaf species – birch, aspen, poplar – so that commercially valuable conifers can dominate.
But this practice has consequences. Roundup creates monoculture conifer stands, which are more resin‑rich and significantly more flammable than mixed‑species forests. Instead of diverse, moisture‑retaining ecosystems, Canada is producing vast tracts of single‑age, single‑species pine and spruce – exactly the kind of forests that burn explosively under extreme fire weather.
The result is a continental paradox: Policies meant to “manage” forests have instead created more combustible landscapes, contributing to the anomalous rise in total annual area burned.
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