1) B.C. sending almost 100 firefighters to Ontario, after 42 deployed to Manitoba

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Wolfgang Depner, May 16, 2025

British Columbia Forests Minister Ravi Parmar says the province is sending almost 100 wildland firefighters to Ontario, where fires have been threatening several communities near the Manitoba border.

Parmar says the deployment comes after B.C. sent 42 firefighters to Manitoba, where a blaze near Lac du Bonnet this week destroyed 28 homes and cottages and left two people dead. 

Manitoba remains in a state of emergency following a declaration by Premier Wab Kinew on May 15. 

Parmar said the deployments are part of an inter-agency agreement that allows provinces to ask each other for wildfire support. 

Cool temperatures and rain have kept B.C.’s own fire situation manageable, Parmar says, allowing for the crews to be deployed. 

He said it’s up to Ontario to decide where the B.C. firefighters will be sent.

Parmar said typical deployments to other jurisdictions last two weeks, but government is assessing the situation on a daily basis. 

The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre said in its 2023 report summarizing Canada’s record-setting wildfire season that national and international collaboration will become increasingly important with the changing climate. 

In 2023, every province except Quebec deployed personnel to B.C. to help fight wildfires. 

The province also received support from the Yukon, the Canadian Armed Forces, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Brazil, Costa Rica and South Africa during the record-setting wildfire season. 

2023 was also Canada’s worst fire season on record as wildfires burned more than 17.2 million hectares. 

2) These trees exist in only one place on Earth. Now climate change and goats threaten their survival

Courtesy Barrie360.com and The Associated Press

By Annika Hammerschlag, May 19, 2025

Flowers blossom on a bottle tree on the Yemeni island of Socotra on Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

On a windswept plateau high above the Arabian Sea, Sena Keybani cradles a sapling that barely reaches her ankle. The young plant, protected by a makeshift fence of wood and wire, is a kind of dragon’s blood tree — a species found only on the Yemeni island of Socotra that is now struggling to survive intensifying threats from climate change.

“Seeing the trees die, it’s like losing one of your babies,” said Keybani, whose family runs a nursery dedicated to preserving the species.

Known for their mushroom-shaped canopies and the blood-red sap that courses through their wood, the trees once stood in great numbers. But increasingly severe cyclones, grazing by invasive goats, and persistent turmoil in Yemen — which is one of the world’s poorest countries and beset by a decade-long civil war — have pushed the species, and the unique ecosystem it supports, toward collapse.

Often compared to the Galapagos Islands, Socotra floats in splendid isolation some 240 kilometers (150 miles) off the Horn of Africa. Its biological riches — including 825 plant species, of which more than a third exist nowhere else on Earth — have earned it UNESCO World Heritage status. Among them are bottle trees, whose swollen trunks jut from rock like sculptures, and frankincense, their gnarled limbs twisting skywards.

But it’s the dragon’s blood tree that has long captured imaginations, its otherworldly form seeming to belong more to the pages of Dr. Seuss than to any terrestrial forest. The island receives about 5,000 tourists annually, many drawn by the surreal sight of the dragon’s blood forests.

Visitors are required to hire local guides and stay in campsites run by Socotran families to ensure tourist dollars are distributed locally. If the trees were to disappear, the industry that sustains many islanders could vanish with them.

“With the income we receive from tourism, we live better than those on the mainland,” said Mubarak Kopi, Socotra’s head of tourism.

But the tree is more than a botanical curiosity: It’s a pillar of Socotra’s ecosystem. The umbrella-like canopies capture fog and rain, which they channel into the soil below, allowing neighboring plants to thrive in the arid climate.

“When you lose the trees, you lose everything — the soil, the water, the entire ecosystem,” said Kay Van Damme, a Belgian conservation biologist who has worked on Socotra since 1999.

Without intervention, scientists like Van Damme warn these trees could disappear within a few centuries — and with them many other species.

“We’ve succeeded, as humans, to destroy huge amounts of nature on most of the world’s islands,” he said. “Socotra is a place where we can actually really do something. But if we don’t, this one is on us.”

Increasingly intense cyclones uproot trees

Across the rugged expanse of Socotra’s Firmihin plateau, the largest remaining dragon’s blood forest unfolds against the backdrop of jagged mountains. Thousands of wide canopies balance atop slender trunks. Socotra starlings dart among the dense crowns while Egyptian vultures bank against the relentless gusts. Below, goats weave through the rocky undergrowth.

The frequency of severe cyclones has increased dramatically across the Arabian Sea in recent decades, according to a 2017 study in the journal Nature Climate Change, and Socotra’s dragon’s blood trees are paying the price.

In 2015, a devastating one-two punch of cyclones — unprecedented in their intensity — tore across the island. Centuries-old specimens, some over 500 years old, which had weathered countless previous storms, were uprooted by the thousands. The destruction continued in 2018 with yet another cyclone.

As greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, so too will the intensity of the storms, warned Hiroyuki Murakami, a climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the study’s lead author. “Climate models all over the world robustly project more favorable conditions for tropical cyclones.”

Invasive goats endanger young trees

But storms aren’t the only threat. Unlike pine or oak trees, which grow 60 to 90 centimeters (25 to 35 inches) per year, dragon’s blood trees creep along at just 2 to 3 centimeters (about 1 inch) annually. By the time they reach maturity, many have already succumbed to an insidious danger: goats.

An invasive species on Socotra, free-roaming goats devour saplings before they have a chance to grow. Outside of hard-to-reach cliffs, the only place young dragon’s blood trees can survive is within protected nurseries.

“The majority of forests that have been surveyed are what we call over-mature — there are no young trees, there are no seedlings,” said Alan Forrest, a biodiversity scientist at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh’s Centre for Middle Eastern Plants. “So you’ve got old trees coming down and dying, and there’s not a lot of regeneration going on.”

Keybani’s family’s nursery is one of several critical enclosures that keep out goats and allow saplings to grow undisturbed.

“Within those nurseries and enclosures, the reproduction and age structure of the vegetation is much better,” Forrest said. “And therefore, it will be more resilient to climate change.”

Conflict threatens conservation

But such conservation efforts are complicated by Yemen’s stalemated civil war. As the Saudi Arabia-backed, internationally recognized government battles Houthi rebels — a Shiite group backed by Iran — the conflict has spilled beyond the country’s borders. Houthi attacks on Israel and commercial shipping in the Red Sea have drawn retaliation from Israeli and Western forces, further destabilizing the region.

“The Yemeni government has 99 problems right now,” said Abdulrahman Al-Eryani, an advisor with Gulf State Analytics, a Washington-based risk consulting firm. “Policymakers are focused on stabilizing the country and ensuring essential services like electricity and water remain functional. Addressing climate issues would be a luxury.”

With little national support, conservation efforts are left largely up to Socotrans. But local resources are scarce, said Sami Mubarak, an ecotourism guide on the island.

Mubarak gestures toward the Keybani family nursery’s slanting fence posts, strung together with flimsy wire. The enclosures only last a few years before the wind and rain break them down. Funding for sturdier nurseries with cement fence posts would go a long way, he said.

“Right now, there are only a few small environmental projects — it’s not enough,” he said. “We need the local authority and national government of Yemen to make conservation a priority.”

3) Two-alarm fire in Barrie raising environmental contamination concerns

Courtesy Barrie360.com

By Julius Hern, May 19, 2025

A “extremely large” fire broke out in Barrie, Ont. at the rear of a building on Welham Rd. Photo: At the Scene Photography/Michael Chorney

A two-alarm fire broke out just after 9 p.m. Saturday at the back of 545 Welham Road in Barrie, for which emergency services received multiple calls.

What was initially an “extremely large” fire on what appeared to be a ramp, engulfing a pile of tires, was contained by Barrie Fire. However, the fire wasn’t the biggest issue.

Fire crews had to contain the water runoff due to environmental concerns from the contents of the combustible items.

City of Barrie Waste Management & Environmental Sustainability crews took over, and were on site for several hours to manage potential contamination from nearby hazardous materials.

The business at the address where the fire occurred is a health foods store.