Fun fact: 90% of forest fires are cussed by human activity.

More fun fact: 100% of crme brulee are tasty.

50% of forest fires are caused by lightning and they account for 80% of area burned…at least in Canada. I suspect your fun fact is just low grade humor adding to people’s general ignorance.

More people in the forest. Most of Canada lives near the border so you get lots of forest and more of fires far away from humans. The US is more dispersed.

I worked for a wildfire agency for a while. There are more people in the North than you imagine. The population figures for us are permanent residents. But the rotational workforce in the North is substantial.

They are there for forestry, but also heavy industry like mining and oil extraction. Outfitting for hunting and fishing as well. The most common human cause in my jurisdiction is the “shore lunch” where guys fishing will pull ashore for lunch and mess up the cooking fire somehow. Number 2 reason is messed up spark arresters on vehicles.

Your explanation makes some sense to me, but not a 400% difference. I’ll take a fire investigator to lunch this week and ask.