Coastal fires continue to barbecue the wildlife in another of those “victories” we can chalk up to the environmentalists. As with the insistence upon wind power leading to chopped up birds, so, too, the demand for pristine and unmanaged forests leads to the burning of both the trees and anything living in or among them.

As I’ve mentioned before, the size and viciousness of the current fires are precisely and exactly because the well-meaning officials — I assume some of them must have meant well — refused to allow any controlled fires for half a century. The coastal environment is built to burn regularly, and refusing to let it do so has caused today’s disaster.