Amid Manitoba's devastating wildfire season, replanting aims to restore forests, fight climate change

At 5:30 a.m., the first alarm goes off, and Marley Moose wakes up in a tent set up in Manitoba's Interlake.  

Her clothes are dusted in dirt and have a lingering smell, after she spent about 10 hours the day before shovelling to make room for hundreds of seedlings among charred trunks in Devils Lake, a pocket in the Interlake region that's about 300 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg. 

Blue-Green Planet Project, a tree-planting company that focuses on sustainability, has been working in partnership with forest services provider Nisokapawino Forestry Management to restore a part of Manitoba's canopy by planting 20 million trees by 2030.

"We're not really doing this for our generation," said Moose, who is from Opaskwayak Cree Nation in northwestern Manitoba and was among 87 tree planters reforesting the area in May. 

"My grandkids will be able to come and see these trees, and they'll be able to run through these forests.…That's going to be their childhood."

Hectares of Crown land in the forest were devastated by a jack pine budworm infestation in 2016. Seedlings were regenerating the forest until an out-of-control wildfire ravaged the area in 2021.

Every spring since then, dozens of people from across Canada have travelled to the forest to plant millions of trees, in hopes of regenerating the ecosystem.

But the devastation the current wildfire season has left in Manitoba has put the need for reforestation projects like this into sharp focus, said Blue-Green Planet Project's Farron Sharp, the reforestation project manager. 

"When you're in a city and protected from a lot of these disasters, it can be really easy to just become apathetic about it," said Sharp.

"Only when it's really close by does it wake you up that this is a crisis."

'A sense of urgency'

As of last week, more than 911,000 hectares had burned in wildfires in Manitoba. More wildfires are expected this season amidst above-normal temperatures forecast for the rest of the summer. 

Sharp has been planting since around 2008. While the number of blazes has fluctuated throughout the years, she said it's now almost inevitable that reforestation projects will be cut short because planters are forced out by wildfires — something that didn't happen when she began, she said.

And more reforested areas burn every year, said Sharp.

"At times, it can feel like it's too late," she said. "You're chasing something that's already coming up behind you."

Reforesting is about bringing back one of the best technologies to absorb carbon — a step needed to help stem climate change and dampen the severity of future wildfire seasons, Sharp said.  

"When you see people lose their homes, people lose their lives, it feels like something that could have been avoided had we woken up 50 years ago," she said. "There's definitely a sense of urgency."

The 2025 Manitoba wildfire season in photos:

Adrian Metcalfe, a manager at the tree planting project, said reforestation will help build back an ecosystem that lost clean air, shade and habitat for animals and plants after the fire.

"We are trying to reverse damage one tree at a time here," he said. "It's our way of telling the Earth that it's not dead yet — not under our watch."

When stretches of forest are reduced to ashes and shattered trunks, the timeline to replenish the canopy is highly dependent on the kind of trees that burned down, Sharp said.

Forests where mature timber burned are less likely to get replanted. 

"You'll have a lot of snags [a still-standing but dead tree] and widowmakers" — a detached or broken limb or tree top — that present dangers to planters, said Sharp.

Meanwhile, aspen forests have a relatively swift regenerative curve, but once they grow, their broad leaves can shade other tree species that already struggle to come up, like spruce.

"It can take up to 150 years for a forest to regenerate fully," said Sharp.

Jack pine forests will regenerate on their own and fairly quickly, she said, as intense heat from the wildfires will open up cones and release seeds. 

Tree planting in forests can generally start as soon as two years after a wildfire, but only if the land is open and safe enough to go in — like Devils Lake, Sharp said.

Opaskwayak Cree Nation tree planter Moose said that with reforestation projects, First Nation communities like hers stand a better chance of getting back harvesting, hunting and ceremonial grounds sooner — important for the well-being of generations to come, she said.

"Indigenous communities in this area … we've already lost so much due to the climate crisis," she said. "Now we have a fighting chance."

'Imperative to healing'

Crews of planters sowed three million seedlings this spring in Devils Lake, Sharp said. But the success went beyond meeting its planting goal — the project also had its highest number of returning planters from Manitoba First Nations this year.

Before planting started in May, Sharp toured communities across the province, carrying 3D-printed seedlings and an arsenal of pictures to show how reforesting Devils Lake is done, hoping to spike interest and recruit new planters. 

While reforesting Devils Lake is the goal, Sharp said the project also aims to involve First Nations in the forest industry through stewardship, training and employment — and hopefully giving the communities tools needed to eventually start their own planting companies and run crews made entirely up of local planters.

"Because there's so much involved in this work and there's a lot of moving parts, it requires people to come back a couple of years to learn the ropes," she said. 

Moose was one of those people. In the spring of 2024, she was unemployed and signed up for planting on a whim, not expecting much out of the experience, she said. But planting trees outdoors became her solace.  

"You could be going through the worst time of your life back in what we called 'the real world' … but when you come out here, you become grateful for the littlest of things," she said. 

The reforestation project turned into an opportunity for Moose to step outside what she described as a cycle of generational trauma her home community, Opaskwayak Cree Nation, has endured after generations of colonization and Canada's residential school system, she said.

"There's always someone that's dying or dead ... there is always someone that's struggling with alcoholism, someone struggling with opioids," said Moose. 

"That is life back home.… When you face tragedy after tragedy, it's hard to get up."

Planting trees at Devils Lake gave her a chance to break from that, she said, and she would like to see more First Nations get involved in this kind of project.

"This is for the sake of our people," said Moose.

With First Nations involved in the decision-making and planting, Sharp said the project has aimed to be part of reconciliation. 

"Having people come back to the land and work with the land, it's imperative to healing," she said.