CONAF and Canada strengthen international cooperation for wildfire management

With the purpose of strengthening international cooperation and preparedness for wildfires, the National Forestry Corporation met with the delegation of the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC). A meeting framed within the joint work that has been carried out for some years and that seeks to address a proposal to update the Operational Plan for the Exchange of Resources for Wildfire Management between Chile and Canada.

This instance is framed within the memorandum of understanding signed between the Ministry of Agriculture of Chile and the Department of Natural Resources of Canada, and seeks to incorporate improvements derived from the experience gained in previous international deployments, optimizing coordination, planning and resource mobilization procedures.

CONAF's Wildfire Protection manager, Mauricio Véjar, highlighted: "the experience of countries like Canada is super important, with whom we have a memorandum of understanding, where each season we send a contingent of no small number of firefighters to support with our knowledge. It is vital to maintain this type of collaboration with the CIFFC, who today visited us to be able to continue advancing in these agreement and improvement protocols."

Among the main aspects considered in the proposal are the precision of the preliminary consultation and formal resource request procedures, as well as adjustments in team composition, personnel coordination and logistical and administrative procedures.

For his part, Mike McCulley, CIFFC's director of operations, noted the value of collaboration between both countries: "we have a well-established relationship with CONAF, which began many years ago and with deployments in Canada in 2023 and 2025. So for us it is a great opportunity to continue building on that."

"In Canada we believe that there are many things we can learn from CONAF and from Chile, and we hope to also share some of our learnings. For these reasons, we will all be better prepared to do our work of protecting our country, our infrastructure, our natural areas and our people against the challenge of wildfires from here on." he added.

It should be noted that in February 2023, CONAF for the first time sent 62 brigade members and technicians to Canada to support in combating megafires during an exceptional emergency. Subsequently, during 2024, CONAF and CIFFC teams worked jointly to formalize the cooperation, which continues to this day.