Why California is experiencing its worst fires on record
THE WEBCAM above her nest shows Iniko, a four-month-old California condor, high in the trees of the Ventana wilderness area, looking out as flames advance towards her. She is part of a 20-year breeding programme to reintroduce the giant birds, which were extinct in the wild, to California’s central coast. She is alone—her parents have fled the danger—and cannot yet fly. At 10:40pm on August 20th the webcam shows a flash of wing feathers, then the live stream goes dark, as the flames, presumably, engulf the nest.
Had the fire been in a previous year, Iniko would probably have been old enough to fly: the worst of the fire season takes place in September or October. But the season of 2020 has started early and with astonishing force. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) said that there had been over 700 wildfires between August 15th and 26th, burning 1.3m acres (500,000 hectares). That is two-thirds as much, in just 12 days, as burned as in the whole of 2018, the worst year to date, and the season has not yet reached its peak. The two biggest conflagrations, one east of San Jose, the other north of San Francisco, are the state’s second- and third-largest on record. Gavin Newsom, the governor, was not exaggerating when he said: “We simply haven’t seen anything like this in many, many years.”
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