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Thousands of trees 'killed by cigarette butt fire' (www.bbc.co.uk)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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A cigarette butt is suspected to have caused a forest fire that is believed to have killed thousands of young trees.

Nests and charred wood have been found after flames ripped through thousands of trees in Harrow Hill in the Forest of Dean following a "short hot spell" in May.

Leoni Dawson, community ranger for Forestry England, said they were worried "this whole place is dead and gone".

It is thought no deer or boar were harmed due to a deer fence enclosing the area, but concerns remain for insects, reptiles, small mammals and bird nests.

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[+] [email protected] -7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

cigarette butt fire

What an odd way of describing a bog-standard minuscule-scale forest fire.

I mean, only thousands of trees? How is that news? That sounds like only a few hectares burnt… something that might hit the local/neighbourhood-level news over here in Canada, where we have seen individual conflagrations consume many billions of trees in 2023 alone, even in regions that are classified as temperate rainforests.

And a “short hot spell” lasting only a few days? This is enough to raise alarm, and/or cause dangerous conditions? Wow.

Honestly, this article reads very, very oddly. As if it happened in a place which has never seen a forest fire before. The breathless reporting of such exceedingly minor “devastation” sounds more like something that had come out of the Amazon or the Congo during the monsoon season, where any forest fire at all during a torrential deluge would be equivalently notable.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

In the UK we have a lot less unspoiled woodland and a much higher population density than Canada. We have to be careful that we don't let a few people ruin it for everyone else by being careless, hence the focus on the cause in this case.

And yes you're right, this hasn't historically been an issue, but climate change means we are much more likely to have forest fires now.

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