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Several miners in Quebec were forced to suspend their activities over the weekend as the province took steps to tackle more than 150 forest fires in the region.

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The province’s road closures and bans on access to forests were expanded to a larger area in Quebec from June 4 onwards to prevent the start of new fires.

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“The recent restrictions imposed by the Quebec government, as a result of the regional forest fire situation, is directly impacting our exploration operations,” Patriot Battery Metals Inc., which owns the Corvette lithium project in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region, said in a statement. “The company has temporarily ceased drilling and surface exploration field activities until the situation improves.”

In the past year, Patriot’s share price has risen by $13, or 485 per cent, as investors bank on the increasing demand for lithium, a metal used to build the batteries that power electric vehicles.

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Osisko Mining Inc., which runs the Windfall gold project in the same region, said it withdrew its staff and continued to monitor the situation. The miner, however, doesn’t expect the suspension of activities to impact its business. The company has a market cap of about $1.3 billion.

Toronto-based Wallbridge Mining Company Ltd., which runs the Fenelon gold project in Quebec’s northern Abitibi region, and Vancouver’s Archer Exploration Corp. that owns the Grasset project, which contains minerals such as nickel and copper in the James Bay area, also suspended their activities and evacuated workers.

Some other miners who have suspended operations because of the wildfires include the Montreal-based Troilus Gold Corp. and Brunswick Exploration Inc., Vancouver-based Quebec Nickel Corp., Idaho-based Hecla Mining Co., which runs the Casa Berardi gold mine in western Quebec and Toronto’s Champion Electric Metals Inc.

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Rio Tinto Ltd. had to shut down its 418-kilometer railway line in Quebec. The railway operations will remain suspended until at least June 9 due to fire and smoke hazards as well as damage to its telecommunications infrastructure and power line along the track, a company spokesperson said in a statement.

The company’s iron-ore wing is also in the process of idling operations at its mine, concentrator and pellet plant in Labrador City, Nfld., until railway operations resume.

Several provinces are battling wildfires in what is shaping up to be one of the worst starts to the forest fire season. Thousands of people have been forced to evacuate nationwide. Wildfires have so far scored about 3.3 million hectares — almost double the area of ​​Lake Ontario — government officials said.

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“Year after year, with climate change, we’re seeing more and more intense wildfires and in places where they don’t normally happen,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday at a briefing in Ottawa. “This is a scary time for a lot of people.”

In a news conference last week, Jonathan Wilkinson, minister of natural resources, also linked the increasing intensity of the wildfires to climate change.

“It is a simple fact that Canada is experiencing the impacts of climate change including more frequent and more extreme wildfires,” he said. “The amount of forest burnt by wildfire is projected to double by 2050 due to our changing climate, causing longer and more intense wildfire seasons, more extreme weather conditions and increased drought.”

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Climate change is the third-biggest threat to the mining industry behind geopolitics and environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns, according to a survey conducted by Ernst & Young Global Ltd. last year.

In 2022 Canadian mining giant Teck Resources Ltd. was hit by extreme weather events that caused the Vancouver-based miner to miss its copper and steelmaking coal production goals.

Flash floods caused by unseasonal rainfall in April 2022 breached the Perkoa zinc mine in Burkina Faso, which used to be run by a Canadian company called Trevali Mining Corp. The floods led to the death of eight workers and Trevali eventually had to shut down production due to financial issues.

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