Let them cut off their hands, maybe that way they won’t burn them”, sang Sau in the song This can be saved. Those verses cried out against people who burn forests for fun or for evil, it doesn’t matter. In the last few weeks, in several places around us, we have seen how flames devoured entire forests just because someone had decided to set them on fire. From Fontainebleau to Pontons and Aiguamurcia passing through so many other places. Unfortunately, it is difficult to catch an arsonist and, in the case of hunting him down, in Catalonia the penalty is between 1 and 5 years in prison. Surely if it is the first conviction he does not have to pay the costs of the trial. The world is full of misfits, but it must be assumed that there is another part of the problem that does not depend on arsonists. The fuel to hurt is there waiting to be lit. Forests are left in God’s hands, and public administrations only care about them when they burn. In other words, politicians only pay attention to the issue when the problem is obvious and it jumps to the front page of the media: in winter they never remember everything they say in the heat of the fire, with everything that the forests must be cleaned, that the fires are put out in winter, that it is a country’s responsibility and blah, blah, blah. If for each fire they put the same statements from the management of a fire from the previous year, no one would see any difference. However, the public is also partly to blame: when the news breaks, after two days, we forget about the issue and stop holding people accountable for bad management. And when the media focus disappears, so does the interest in finding the arsonist. And so, until the next campaign.
