President Donald Trump has blamed improper forest management for Canadian wildfires whose smoke drifted into the Midwestern and Northeastern U.S. earlier this month. But climate change — and not a lack of “Debris Removal,” as Trump suggested — is the main factor leading to worsening Canadian wildfires and smoke pollution, experts from both sides of the border told us.
Large-scale strategies to manage Canada’s vast boreal forest — part of the belt of high-latitude forests circling the North Pole — would be both infeasible and likely ineffective at solving the problem, they said.
Trump claimed in a July 17 Truth Social post that Canada is “not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air, the quality of which is dangerous, and totally unacceptable!”

