The global 2025 wildfire season can be summed up with one of two extreme datapoints. It can be strange to think of the good news of wildfires, but for the optimists, last year’s blazes set aflame the second smallest number of square miles since 2002, behind only 2018, when around 330 million hectares burned. For the realists in the rooms—perhaps joined by economists and accountants—2025’s wildfire season was anything but good news.
Last year’s fires took the costliest financial toll in recorded wildfire history, accounting for 38% of all insured losses related to natural hazards, according to a study published Sunday in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment. That’s despite the fact the area burned by fires around the world was 16% below the long-term average of around 400 million hectares.
