Here`s part of a BBC news report about the wildfires blazing through parts of California this last week.

Quote:The Californian authorities are now battling fires on 10 separate fronts in Los Angeles, San Diego, Ventura and San Bernardino counties.

More than 300,000 acres (120,000 hectares) have been destroyed and at least 800 homes reduced to ashes.


California Fire Destruction
13 people killed
800 houses destroyed
30,000 homes under threat
300,000 acres consumed
7,000 firefighters deployed
The BBC's Robert Nisbet in San Bernardino county said the flames were travelling up to four kilometres (2.4 miles) an hour and described the scene as "almost apocalyptic".

Earlier, highway patrol staff in the county said two people were found dead in their car, apparently trying to escape a fire.

"We were literally running through fire," said Lisza Pontes, 43, who escaped a fire in San Diego county with her family after the roar of the flames woke them up.

What caught my attention was this part in particular:-

Quote:300,000 acres consumed

I wonder how much of those 300,000 acres is made up of trees? How long can we afford to keep losing so much `natural` resources in this way? :cry:

When I was there last time... not much. Most of it is high grass, which is why it travels so fast.

There are some wooded areas but mostly they are rocks, and dunes with about two feet tall grass on them.

That`s a relief, it could have been so much worse then.

I thought this was an interesting news item re the trees.

Quote:Africa's Nobel laureate says plant a billion trees
Wed Nov 8, 2006 1:17 PM GMT14

NAIROBI - The United Nations and Africa's Nobel laureate, environmentalist Wangari Maathai, launched a project on Wednesday to plant a billion trees worldwide to help fight climate change and poverty.

Kenya's Wangari Maathai, who in 2004 became the first African woman and first "green" activist to win the Nobel Peace Prize, urged people from the United States to Uganda to plant trees to combat global warming and to make a long-term commitment.

"Anybody can dig a hole, anybody can put a tree in that hole and water it. And everybody can make sure that the tree they plant survives," she said on the sidelines of a U.N. meeting on climate change in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

"There are 6 billion of us and counting. So even if only one-sixth of us each plant a tree, we will definitely reach the target (next year)," she told reporters.

Maathai, 66, became Africa's best known environmentalist after her Green Belt Movement planted about 30 million trees around Africa in a drive to slow deforestation and erosion.

Her work was praised by the Nobel committee as a step to help end poverty and avert potential conflicts over scarce building materials and firewood.

Reuters