One principle of environmental science and engineering is that air and water pollution are a form of trespass. When you intentionally or accidentally allow contaminants in the air or water that leaves your property to cross into someone else’s property. You are committing a trespass, and can be held legally liable for the consequences. Just like you could if your dog pooped on the neighbor’s lawn, or that same dog pulled over your trash can and scattered trash into the street and your neighbor’s yards.

US (and international) law even goes so far as to say you are trespassing if that happens not because you intentionally or accidentally released the pollutants, but if you fail to take action to prevent those contaminants from going into the air or water (both surface and groundwater). Of course, a government agency with jurisdiction can issue you a permit that allows you to pollute your neighbor’s air and water – or even that of folks miles away from you – if you pay your fee, obey their draconian orders, and are nice to the inspectors and other officials.

(It’s a wonderful scheme to increase government power, isn’t it?)

Now, let us look at August 2025 and the Dominion of Canada. In fact, here is a map:

All those little dots are wildfires: either grasslands or forests. Yes, there are quite a few in the States (and more off the map to the south.) (Though “fire season” is really just ramping up, despite drought in many areas.) But a smattering compared to what the Prairie Provinces are “enjoying.” According to one count, 740 fires right now.

Why? An article at ZeroHedge.com claims that it is Canada’s mismanagement of their forests and wildlife that has resulted in poisoning both their own air and the air of a dozen US States. This year is only the 2nd worse fire season in the boreal forests of North America: 2023 was the worst, and the emissions that year were claimed to be the equivalent of 500 million gasoline automobiles’ annual emissions.

Global warming by greenhouse gases, anyone? What forest fires pump into the atmosphere – that smoke – is little different from industrial and transportation emissions. There is lots of particularate matter (dust and ash, especially the small stuff (2.5 to 10 microns in size) that sticks deep in the lungs. And a lot of the “greenhouse gas” carbon dioxide: a combustion product of carbon-based vegetable material (wood, leaves/needles, etc.) and oxygen. And due to incomplete (inefficient) combustion, a lot of the truly-deadly carbon monoxide. And even some sulfur and nitrogen oxides from sufficiently high enough combustion temperatures, and based on what, besides wood and vegetable matter, is consumed in the flames.

Setting aside the claims about greenhouse gases, the massive amount of smoke drifting downwind of ANY major wildland fire is nasty: bad for the lungs, bad for the eyes, bad for the heart if you try to exercise or exert yourself. And not just short-term effects, but also life-long, and certainly chan shorten that life!

We denizens of the Western States are used to this: every year we have a few days of living in smoke-filled air from forests in the Rockies and especially California, Oregon, and Washington (Sierra Nevada and Coast Ranges). Why? Well, besides low annual precipitation (and high evaporation) rates, droughts, winds, and idiots (who start fires), we can blame nearly a century of Smokey the Bear propaganda.

Western forests are “fire-climax” ecosystems. The plants (Ponderosa, Spruce, Douglas Fir, and the understories, etc.) are designed to survive and thrive in a low-rainfall (less than 30 inches and sometimes much less each year) climate and one through which fires regularly come through. By regularly, we mean every few years. The small stuff (in Ponderosa pine forests we call it “doghair”), the understory plants, and the aged or even dead trees burn. Thick mats of dead, dried needles and accumulated dead leaves got burned and went away. Their ashes provide nutrients to sustain the forest. The fires would start with lightning strikes and sometimes humans (intentionally or accidentally).

The problem is that for a century, especially in the vast federally-owned lands of the West, wildfires were prevented and quickly suppressed whenever possible. (Remember, only YOU can prevent Forest Fires!)

The dead stuff didn’t go away. Instead, the “fire load” just built up and rotted a bit, but was just there. Until a lightning strike or a careless match or something (catalytic converters, for one) started a fire. With all that fuel available, the new forest fires burn very, very hot. Instead of just burning off the young, scrawny and unhealthy trees and the old dying or dead trees, the fires burn it all. And the high temperatures often sterilize the soil: what once would take a year or two to recover now requires decades.

Every few years, yet another huge chunk of fire-climax forest deprived of the beneficial aspects of “natural wildfire” gets burned up. Below is an example of one we here at TPOL have been waiting to explode for 25 years: this is on the south slope of the famous Wolf Creek Pass in Colorado.

All those gray, standing dead trees are just waiting for a spark, a lightning bolt, a backfire, or a tossed cigarette. And the terrain is incredible rough: all the foam bombers in North America will not keep 200,000 or more acres from being burned to a sterile crisp.

Why has all this happened? Why decades and decades of mismanagement? Why the ticking time bomb? In large part, it is the tragedy of the commons. The “people own it,” so the effect is that no one has any real sense of ownership and responsibility, except as they need to get a government paycheck. Which seems to be the same problem up in the Provinces and the Territory.

Be prepared!