Moving firewood in Manitoba: the Winnipeg emerald ash borer area, elm wood storage and the Forest Health Protection Act

This page reports what the official source says. It is not legal advice: ask the office named here. It follows the Manitoba pages on firewood and Dutch elm disease and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) firewood page, read October 9, 2026.

Restrictions listed by the province

The province's Don't Move Firewood page answers the question of whether there are laws about moving or storing wood with a list, and warns that the list may change as other infestations are identified. It points to The Forest Health Protection Act and its regulations and to the federal Plant Protection Act for the legal text.

Wood	Restriction the page lists
Firewood of any species	Restricted from leaving the City of Winnipeg
Ash wood and ash products	Restricted from leaving the City of Winnipeg, and ash wood cannot be brought into Manitoba from Ontario or Quebec
Barked pine wood	Cannot be brought into Manitoba from British Columbia, parts of Alberta and parts of Saskatchewan unless it has been heat treated
Elm wood	Cannot be stored unless it has been debarked, chipped or heat treated, and should only be moved to a disposal site, usually the local landfill
Firewood from the United States	Firewood of any species cannot be brought into Canada from the United States

Why Winnipeg is a regulated area

The same page says regulated areas are areas quarantined for certain plant products to slow the spread of invasive species. It says emerald ash borer was confirmed in Winnipeg on November 30, 2017, and that firewood and ash products cannot leave the city because those products carry a high risk of moving the beetle into uninfested parts of Manitoba. It adds that heat-treated firewood is usually safe to move but cannot be moved outside regulated areas, and that information on regulated areas is updated on the Forestry and Peatlands Branch emerald ash borer website.

For wood that arrives by mistake, the page names orange drop-off bins near the Saskatchewan border on the Trans Canada Highway at Kirkella and on the Yellowhead Highway at Russell, near the Ontario border on the Trans Canada Highway at Whiteshell Provincial Park, and on Highway 75 at the Emerson Travel Manitoba centre. It says other options are to burn the wood quickly under local bylaws or to take it to a designated disposal site.

The CFIA firewood page, modified September 22, 2026, lists Dutch elm disease and emerald ash borer as the regulated pests for Manitoba. It says moving firewood outside a regulated area is prohibited, that it is allowed inside a regulated area and, from a non-regulated area, so long as the trip does not pass through a regulated area, and that heat-treated firewood can leave a regulated area with a CFIA movement certificate or under a compliance agreement. It gives penalties of up to CA$50,000 and prosecution under the Plant Protection Act.

Elm wood and the inspectors

The province's Dutch elm disease questions and answers say elm cannot be kept as firewood and that storing elm wood is illegal. The paper Dutch Elm Disease Management in Manitoba describes the program, which runs under The Forest Health Protection Act and its regulations:

It says elm firewood is illegal to store or transport in Manitoba.
It says the program ran in 38 communities when the paper was written, and that the City of Winnipeg manages the disease within its own limits.
It says that from mid-May to September, provincially appointed inspectors and officers search managed communities for elm firewood and diseased elms, driving each street and back lane and checking firewood piles.
It says that under the Act, inspectors and officers may enter private property to inspect without the owner's permission.
It says that when elm wood is found, inspectors mark it with orange paint, fasten a metal tag and leave a letter, and that the owner must destroy the marked wood by burning or chipping, or take it to an elm wood disposal site, within the two weeks set out in the letter.

The questions and answers also say elm can be pruned except between April 1 and July 31, the period when the beetles are active.

Not published

Penalties under The Forest Health Protection Act for moving firewood: not published on the pages read, which point to the Act.
The consolidated text of the Act and regulation: not opened. The address the province's paper gives for the Act returned an outdated-link message on October 9, 2026.

For other states and provinces see the table on moving wood and firewood.