By JOHN WARD
OTTAWA (CP) - Even if every Canadian met the government's "one-tonne challenge" to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the whole effort could be wiped out by a few big forest fires, researchers say.
In a bad year, forest fires in Canada can produce pollution equal to that generated by industry.
 The National Forest Strategy Coalition says such fires across the country can produce 150 million tonnes of greenhouse gases in a single year - five times what the one-tonne challenge program would save.
Just three fires that raged in British Columbia two summers ago pumped out 15 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

It's time to take a careful look at forest management, says the coalition, a group that includes both public and private members, such as the Canadian Forest Service and the Canadian Forestry Association.
It is calling for a new forest management system that would see more effort directed to preventing fires, protecting forests from insect pests - carbon is also released when dead trees rot - and planting new trees.
Forests represent a two-way street when it comes to greenhouse gases, the compounds thought to be contributing to global warming. They pull carbon out of the air - two cubic metres of wood is equivalent to a tonne of atmospheric carbon - but they can also release vast amounts of gases when they burn or decay.
Canada's 402 million hectares of forest represent 10 per cent of the world total, storing a sizeable portion of the world's carbon. But when they burn they throw that carbon back into the atmosphere.
"Forest fires are the wild card in the global challenge to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," said Brian Stocks, a forest fire expert from Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.
"With climate change we know we are going to see more fires and more forest area burned in the future. And it takes 30 years before the new growth begins to sequester carbon at the same rate as the old forest."
Forests actually need fires. They are part of a natural recycling system and will always be a factor.
"But to the extent that we can manage forests in a way that helps mitigate the fire problem, the global climate and future generations will benefit," said Stocks.
It's not just a Canadian problem, the coalition said. Forest fires that raged in Indonesia for months in the late 1990s released up to 2.6 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases, equal to about 40 per cent of the world's annual industrial emissions.
Canada has about 8,500 forest fires a year. Some 60 per cent are started by humans, but they do only about 20 per cent of the annual damage. The vast majority of destruction comes from natural fires touched off by lightning.
Nevertheless, controlling the human end of the equation would be helpful, Stocks said.
"There will always be natural fires. They've been around as long as the forests have."
Jean Cing-Mars, chairman of the coalition, said there's a need for more research to improve forest management.
He said Canada and the world cannot meet Kyoto pollution-reduction targets without well-managed forests.
The coalition said part of the solution is education.
Much of the attention paid to forestry in the ecological debate looks south to the tropical rain forests. But the great boreal forests that girdle the Northern Hemisphere, through Canada and Russia, also provide a challenge - and a partial solution to some of the greenhouse gas threat.