No, forest fires do not occur where mining projects are planned Wildfire 2023

The map of the fires taken 1 hour ago and the map of their mining plan for 2025 is a simple coincidence.says one user in a Facebook post.

The post includes two maps: one showing the wildfires currently burning in Quebec, and the other labeled Major Minerals of the Future in Quebec: Projects and Mines.

The post was shared at least thousands of times on Facebook, where there are dozens of copies. The cards have also found their way onto Twitter and TikTok, where several videos have garnered over 100,000 total views.

The map at left is a screenshot of a map from Natural Resources Canada’s Canadian Wildland Fire Information System published June 5 on the Montreal Gazette’s website. Duty (new window). This map showed the state of the land at that date.

The map on the right is from the Quebec government website (new window). Despite the wording, the map does not show the location of planned mining projects in Quebec, but rather the deposits of mined mineral resources within the province.

A map showing the actual location (new window) About thirty Quebec mining projects can be found on the Ministère des Ressources naturelles et des Forêts website.

If we compare this last map with the map representing the current state of forest fires at the SOPFEU site (new window)We see that these have nothing to do with the location of the mining projects.

Fires seem to be taking place mainly in areas where no mining project is planned. There are no active forest fires in the Rhône-Noranda region, for example, where a third of the mining projects are planned.

You can see the difference between the two graphs using the interactive tool below.