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\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\nWildfire season is once again upon us, and Manitobans are hoping this year is a reprieve from 2025, which was deemed the one most devastating in the province\u2019s history.\u00a0As the severity of wildfires increases, so too does the importance of reforestation and tree planting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWildfires are more prevalent, and they\u2019re more powerful, and part of the reason is the buildup of fuel, you know, you have diseases, you have shorter and milder winters, so there\u2019s less snowpack and less moisture in the spring, so all these factors into making for a difficult situation,\u201d said Randall Van Wagner, the head of national greening program, Tree Canada.<\/p>\n
Van Wagner says while many areas regenerate on their own, more intense fires like what we saw last year cause more depth of burn in the soil, making it difficult for trees to regenerate.\u00a0The organization estimates they\u2019ve planted between 500,000 and one million trees in the past five years in Manitoba.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis coming year we\u2019re going to plant about 200,000, mainly in the Swan Valley Watershed, which is on the west side of the province, and that\u2019s a three-year initiative which will plant over half a million trees in that watershed,\u201d said Van Wagner.<\/p>\n
University of Manitoba professor Shirley Thompson says she\u2019s concerned that tree planting efforts could fall behind.\u00a0 Last fall, the federal government announced they\u2019re winding down the two-billion-tree program, which funded tree planting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the decade of the United Nations ecosystem restoration, and two billion trees was in keeping with that, and by taking it away, it\u2019s creating a less stable ecosystem, so this funding is so important to ensure that our communities are green, healthy,\u201d said Thompson.<\/p>\n
The program is still honouring previous commitments, like the agreement with Tree Canada, which is good until 2031.\u00a0 The province has also benefited from the program.<\/p>\n
In a statement to CityNews, natural resources minister Ian Bushie said, \u201cCanada\u2019s boreal forest is the largest intact forest in the world, and our government is committed to making sure the Manitoba portion of it remains like that in a healthy, sustainable way. Through agreements made ahead of time with the federal government, the Two Billion Tree Initiative continues in Manitoba until 2031. This year, we plan to plant 850,000 seedlings to reforest Crown Land affected by wildfires, insects, or other natural events.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\tTrees burned by wildfires in northern Manitoba are shown during a helicopter tour in the surrounding area of Flin Flon, Man. on Thursday, June 12, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS\/Mike Deal-Pool Winnipeg Free Press <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wildfire season is once again upon us, and Manitobans are hoping this year is a reprieve from 2025,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-633128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}