The fact that some trees only germinate in the presence of wildfires points to wildfires being a very natural and pre-human thing. And recent wildfire management practices are likely a strong factor in recent wildfires.
https://www.wilderness.org/articles/article/5-big-myths-abou...
Ecologically, wildfires are necessary for some biomes. However, not all of them. Many are needlessly destructive due to climate change and over logging of forests.
most of these fires in Canada are because it needs to be -40C for about 2 weeks to kill off the pine beetle . if the beetle doesn't die then it, as the name suggests, infests pine trees and kills them.
after a couple seasons you have massive, absolutely immense swaths of dead pine trees, full of flammable pine tar and sap. eventually they burn, and the warm temps + beetles mean they don't come back. ecological change, biome collapse.
That's something to note : Jack pine which is fire adapted doesn't mature for a pretty long time. The boreal forest is meant to have massive powerful forest fires that clear stands completely but they're supposed to happen on a timeline of like 80+ years.
I'm not as plugged in as I used to be, but I recall some folks worried about more birch taking up space up north bc of how often burns were happening and birch loves to form massive stands when the floor clears.
I’m not an expert in forestry. It it doesn’t seem feasible that Canada was every really doing any large scale forest fire prevention simply due to the scale of the country and forests within it.