As everyone knows by now, wildfires have ravaged a good chunk of California recently, with some spots still burning. A side note in a portion of the news stories was that half a million acres of forest were lost. Secondary to the loss of homes, lives, and money. Now I can understand the importance of those three items, and I can definitely sympathize with all of them, but I wish that more emphasis was placed on exactly the scale of wilderness that was lost. The years and years and years of growth, and the amount of time it is going to take to recover these forests. Not to mention the amount of habitats that were ruined, and the centuries it will take for even a small portion of them to be recovered. As sad as it is though, the blame generally doesn't always fall on any one person. Sometimes the blame is people in general, with downed power lines... sometimes its natural, like a lightning strike. What irritates me though, is that a kid with no respect for his environment decides to play with matches and singlehandedly destroys 40,000 acres. It's sad that this kid was never educated or made to understand the danger of fire to that portion of the country, during a dry season, and the overall impact a fire could have. I guess when a kid is that young, he was under 13, it's hard to make them understand. But in my mind it's important that people try, schools try, politicians try, and everyone tries. Maybe then we could avoid things like this, and our environment would be better because of it.