Trump appeared before a crowd of cheering steelworkers

, about 200 fires are actively burning in Canada and have consumed about 7,700 square miles (19,900 square kilometers) of terrain, most of it in the last week.Only 2023 saw such high numbers so early in Canada’s fire season, which runs from April through October. That year wildfires burned a record 67,000 square miles — more than twice the surface area of Lake Superior, the largest of the Great Lakes.

Taken together, the hot spots and acres burned mean 2025 is the second-worst start to the season in years.“A warm and dry finish to May and early June has created a significant fire season,” said Liam Buchart, a fire weather specialist with the Canadian Forest Service.The weather conditions are made more likely by climate change and encourage wildfires to start. That means even though 90% of wildfires in Manitoba this year have been human-caused,

, climate change helps enable their spread.“Climate change is creating the conditions that make it more likely that human-caused fires are going to spread, or even start,” MacCarthy said. “It might be a human starting it, but it’s going to spread quickly because now there’s hot and dry conditions that are occurring more frequently and more intensely than they have in the past.”

The hot and dry weather is likely to to continue for at least the next week across Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta,

. The agency’s forecasts also call for “a warmer and drier than normal July and August for large portions of Canada,” Buchart said.Roughly 73 square miles (189 square kilometers) of homelands have been returned to the Yurok, more than doubling the tribe’s land holdings, according to a deal announced Thursday. Completion of the land-back conservation deal along the lower Klamath River — a partnership with Western Rivers Conservancy and other environmental groups — is being called the largest in California history.

The Yurok Tribe had 90% of its territory taken during the California Gold Rush in the mid-1800s, suffering massacres and disease from settlers.“To go from when I was a kid and 20 years ago even, from being afraid to go out there to having it be back in tribal hands … is incredible,” said McCovey, director of the Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of a series of on how tribes and Indigenous communities are coping with and combating climate change.Land Back is a global movement seeking the return of homelands to Indigenous people through ownership or co-stewardship.