Up in smoke: Thousands of years of nature

Not too far south of my apartment is a town called Delta. In between Delta and my place is one of the world's largest bogs, Burns' Bog.

An environmentally sensitive ecosystem, Burns' Bog has been a large source of tension between developers and environmentalists over the years, and through it all, the latter have largely succeeded in keeping the bog protected.

Last night, I was standing on my patio, enjoying that autumnal smell in the air -- that far too fresh scent that always tells you winter's either comin' or goin'. Surfing on the breeze was the aroma of woodsmoke, a smell I dearly love, and don't get to smell often enough, living in a large city.

Today I've found out that Burns' Bog is up in smoke. That smell of woodsmoke is thousands of years of a delicate ecosystem being destroyed. The air around my house is thick with the smoke, though the fire's some 20 kilometres away from here, in an area more than 10 times the size of New York's Central park.

The dense peat moss smoke coats my throat and nose, and I've got a headache.

Only 3% of the world today is home to peat boglands. Of them, Burns' Bog is one of the most notable in the world and is known to biologists the world over.

And what pisses me off is, that despite not knowing the cause of the fire at this point, you know it will wind up being some fucker with a cigarette who doesn't know how to extinguish a butt against his shoe. Have some fucking sense, people.

What absolute disregard people have for the world around us. How can we possibly live with ourselves with all this goddamned arrogance we show towards nature?

Living in this beautiful part of the world with virgin temperate forests and some of the nicest rainforests found on this continent leaves me fiercely protective of the nature around me. When I find out about fires like these, caused by idiots with cigarettes, or dickhead hikers who've left a glass bottle on a trail that magnifies the sun's heat and causes a fire, I'm left with a simmering rage that I can't even begin to quench.

How fucking dare they. Invariably, most of the people who start fires tend to be horrified at what they've done. They feel badly about it. Most don't get the punishment they deserve.

I'm here to tell you that stupidity isn't an excuse. Smarten the fuck up.

And Burns' Bog isn't just a forest. It won't come back in a hundred years. No. It'll never, ever be back. It takes thousands of years for peatland to develop. It's safe to say with man's disregard for the natural world now that that will simply never happen.

What a fucking shame.

http://www.burnsbog.org/