Increasingly severe wildfire seasons are a public safety concern in Newfoundland and Labrador, while also having implications for regular activities in rural and remote areas, including geoscience work essential for the mining sector.
Day-to-day, fires can make work areas inaccessible for safety reasons. In other cases, aircraft used to place scientists in rural and remote areas for their field work are diverted to assist where possible in wildfire response efforts.
It means scientific program directors have more to juggle in their planning, scheduling and re-scheduling than in years past. But the minister responsible says the work is getting done.
Last year, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador’s actual spending on transportation for geophysical survey work for the Geological Survey of Newfoundland and Labrador was $321,800 below what the province had budgeted.
The difference, as Energy and Mines Minister Lloyd Parrott said when asked in a public budget review meeting, “was due to less than anticipated helicopter usage due to unavailability and a lot of that came as a result of the wildfires.”
Scientists with the geological survey will sometimes use drones in their field programs, but mainly need to gather samples and perform activities drone work alone cannot cover. They will at times be able to access areas travelling over land but, in particular for areas of Labrador, helicopters are an essential tool.
Disruption of helicopter travel can happen due to weather, particularly high winds, cloud cover or fog. Wildfires are another concern.
“This summer, some helicopter resources that support geoscience field work have been reassigned to assist with wildfire suppression efforts,” Parrott confirmed in a recent statement to CBC News.
“However, the impacts have been considerably less significant than those experienced during the 2025 wildfire season,” he added.
Despite the complications caused by wildfires, he said the survey’s work is still advancing.
Recent projects, some jointly funded with the federal government, have included data collection for areas in southeastern Labrador, prospective for rare earth elements, and a geophysical survey of the White Bay area.
This year, the Geological Survey of Newfoundland and Labrador has 10 active field projects, with six focused on areas in Newfoundland and four in Labrador. There are also two planned airborne surveys that use fixed-wing aircraft but are also part of the science program.
Beyond gathering in the field, scientists will run a variety of tests on samples collected and process data, ultimately making the results publicly available, including in peer-reviewed scientific reports.
“That work from industry’s perspective is invaluable. It is so important,” said Mining Industry N.L. executive director Amanda McCallum.
“These data sets are used to help with driving investment, it helps de-risk projects, it improves capital for projects, it informs land use decisions, it helps accelerate potential discoveries and the pace of discoveries. It’s incredibly important,” she said.
Public geoscience isn’t done at the order of industry but can directly lead to prospector and industry investment, to further spending on more detailed exploration. McCallum said she’d like to see more support for the efforts.
Regardless, the province is seeing record-high levels of private spending on exploration work. The forecast for the year is $283.3 million, up from just under $249 million spent in 2025.
“If you were to add up from 2021 up to forecasted for this calendar year in 2026, we’re talking $1.44 billion in exploration — money spent in mostly rural and remote regions of this province. That’s new money and that’s foreign direct investment,” McCallum said.
In the private sector, McCallum said industry is also managing through wildfire disruptions.
“They’re maybe having to adjust their field season. So they might shorten it, or they might delay projects, but it doesn’t mean the projects might not proceed or go ahead,” she said.
McCallum said she’s not aware of planned work not proceeding at all because of wildfires. She credited the agility within the sector.
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Mining is the second-largest contributor to Newfoundland and Labrador’s GDP, McCallum noted, with 11 active mines. Mining is directly employing an estimated 8,920 people as of 2025, with exploration work included in that count.
As of Wednesday, the wildfire risk level throughout all reported areas of Newfoundland and Labrador was at low. There were still four active fires in parts of central and northern Labrador. The year has seen fewer fires versus 2025, at 126 to date compared to 243 last year, but a larger area burned in total hectares.
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