#ArdeAsturias. Fire In Paradise

 

We are burning.

Our green paradise is slowly turning black under the fires that scar our landscapes and kill our wildlife. Yet many people will believe that this is inevitable and will not lay the blame squarely on the right shoulders. They’ll go on about irresponsible farmers or hunters, but nobody cares to investigate the legislation on burnt ground and building that facilitates the misuse of of the land that belongs to us all by unscrupulous politicians with the connivance  of their  greedy cohorts

Nowadays, farmers cannot go into the forest and chop down a tree for wood without the authorisation of the forest guard. They cannot collect pine cones even though we all know that squirrels only eat the ones they collect and field mice don’t eat them either. Their use is to light our wood burning stoves or chimneys. If we want to light a bonfire to burn the stubble from cleaning a field, we need a written permit from the local authorities and if anything happens the fines are huge. If there’s a fire, the first people out to fight it are the farmers with their water wagons, helping the fire brigades. Last night, people were out with buckets and hoses. The Spanish government has money to send 6000 policemen to Catalonia to stop people from voting but not enough to spend on firemen to defend our natural patrimony.

Our forests have have many ‘defenders’  nowadays and people forget the defenders that have always been there, caring for it and respecting it because they make their livelihood from it, whether it’s a cattle farmer that grazes their cattle or a neighbour that goes for a bit of wood  that the wind knocked down for the fireplace, perhaps cutting access to a path or a field.
We forget all too easily that this world is ours to care for, not ours to pillage and plunder.

We forget that we belong to the land, not the land to us.

We forget that nature always finds a way. We can either help or face the consequences.

If we forget nature, nature will remind us of our place in no uncertain terms.