Wildfires threaten livelihoods as trappers brace for impact on the land they rely on

Trappers brace for massive losses as wildfires tear through boreal forest, threatening cabins, traplines, and livelihoods across northern Canada.

Some trappers are expecting “catastrophic losses” to their food and financial security this year, as Canada’s second-worst wildfire season on record sent swaths of remote boreal forest up in flames.

The latest figures from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre suggest fires have torn through 78,000 square kilometres of land, with most of the fires on the Prairies.

“These are humongous fires … (the) majority of the traplines will be affected in a big way,” said Ron Spence, a trapper from Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation in northern Manitoba.

“I’m sure there’s portions of my line that are going to be affected.”

Roughly 20,000 square kilometres of land have burned this year, considered Manitoba’s worst wildfire season in at least 30 years. It’s more than double the area from the second-worst season in the province in 2013.

For trappers who call the land their office, it’s a waiting game until they can see how their traplines, equipment and cabins have fared.

Spence, a councillor in the community, oversees a portion of traplines as vice-president of the Manitoba Trappers Association. Aside from Nisichawayasihk, he looks after other areas dealing with fires and evacuations, including Tataskwayak and O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nations.

His registered trapline, a “fair size” horseshoe shape, runs between Nelson House and South Indian Lake.