EUROPE IN FLAMES

For days, Europe seems to have traded the blue of summer for a sky tinged with orange.

The images are endlessly repeated in the news: gigantic flames advancing through forests, roads engulfed in smoke, families leaving their homes in haste, carrying what they managed to save in a few minutes. Gymnasiums, exhibition centers, and spaces made available by municipalities are transformed into makeshift shelters to receive those who have lost everything—or who still don't know if they will have a home to return to.

We watched, dismayed, the despair of these people. We saw exhausted firefighters, planes piercing through an almost impenetrable curtain of smoke, and an entire task force trying to contain fires that seemed to have acquired a will of their own.

But while our eyes follow the flames reaching the cities, another tragedy is unfolding within the forests.

A tragedy that is rarely shown. There were houses there too.

Not built with walls, roofs, or windows, but carefully prepared among branches, roots, stones, trunks, and small holes dug in the ground. They were nests, burrows, and hiding places where animals slept, protected their young, searched for food, and simply lived their lives.

Until the fire arrived.

When we think of a forest fire, we might imagine that animals, guided by their instincts, are able to sense the danger and flee. Some actually do. They run, fly, crawl, or seek shelter wherever they can. But nature hasn't granted everyone the same speed—nor has it offered them a map indicating which direction to escape.

The youngest have not yet learned to flee. The young remain in the nests waiting for their parents. Elderly or injured animals cannot keep up with the others. Hedgehogs, turtles, small rodents, amphibians, reptiles, and so many other inhabitants of the undergrowth simply do not have enough speed to overcome a wall of fire pushed by the wind.

Some hide in burrows, believing they are protected, without understanding that heat and smoke also travel through the earth. Others run the wrong way.

And many, even without being reached by the flames, end up intoxicated by the toxic smoke that invades their lungs, disorients their senses, and obscures the landmarks they always used to find shelter.

Suddenly, the forest they knew ceases to exist.

It's difficult to imagine what an animal surrounded by fire feels. It doesn't know what's happening, it doesn't understand heat waves, climate change, or evacuation plans. It only perceives that the air has become unbreathable, that the ground is hot, that the sky has disappeared under the smoke, and that all paths seem to lead to the same place.

He runs because he's afraid. He runs because he wants to live. But he doesn't always succeed.

From above, the Canadair helicopters appear like enormous yellow and red birds soaring through the ash-covered sky. In a few seconds, they glide over lakes, reservoirs, or the sea, collect thousands of liters of water, and then gain altitude again. Soon after, they fly over the burning areas and drop that precious cargo onto the fire.

The operation is repeated tirelessly.

While one aircraft returns to refuel, another approaches the fire line. Helicopters transport water, teams work on the ground, and firefighters advance through places where the heat seems to make it impossible to take another step. The work of these professionals is absolutely extraordinary.

They brave the fire when everyone else needs to flee. They risk their own lives to protect people they've never met, houses they've never entered, and forests they may never have visited before that day.

But there is something particularly painful in the images of firefighters looking at the flames with an expression of utter desolation. It is not a lack of courage or effort. It is the powerlessness of those who are offering everything they have and yet realize that the fire is advancing faster than any human being can fight it.

They overcome one challenge, and another emerges. They control an area, and the wind changes direction. They work for hours, until their bodies can no longer keep up with the determination to continue.

And in the midst of this unequal battle, many also encounter animals that are injured, disoriented, or motionless among the ashes. Perhaps it is at this moment that they understand that saving a forest has never meant only fighting the fire.

Because, when the fire finally passes, the tragedy does not end.

The survivors emerge before an unrecognizable landscape. They can no longer find the paths they once traveled, the places where they hid, or the trees that offered them fruit and shelter. Food sources have disappeared. Nests have been destroyed. The soil, once teeming with life, has become a vast layer of ash.

Even water, which could mean salvation, can carry sediment, ash, and substances released by the burning. With the first rains, some of this material runs off into streams, rivers, and lakes, affecting fish, amphibians, and all animals that depend on those environments.

Those who escaped the fire will still have to face hunger, thirst, injuries, loss of territory, and lack of shelter. Many end up near roads and urban areas, where they encounter completely different dangers: being run over, fences, dogs, disorientation, and the fear of people who don't understand why they are there.

They were driven from their homes by fires that, in the vast majority of cases, are started by human hands—whether criminally, by a cigarette butt thrown out the window, a poorly extinguished campfire, or any other act of negligence that, in a few minutes, turns an entire forest into ashes. We are the ones who start the fires, destroy the only place where these animals could live, and then, when they appear frightened on our roads, in our backyards, and in our cities, we still treat them as invaders. They didn't come to occupy our space. They are simply trying to survive what we ourselves caused.

European forests are home to a large proportion of the continent's native terrestrial species. They are ecosystems formed by delicate relationships, often invisible to the naked eye. A tree is not just a tree. It provides food, shade, shelter, and a place to reproduce. A small insect can pollinate plants, feed birds, and participate in the decomposition of organic matter. A watercourse sustains life far beyond what we can see on its surface.

When fire destroys all of this at once, it's not just animals and plants that disappear. Connections built by nature over centuries are broken.

It's true that some forests can regenerate after a fire. Fire, under certain conditions, is part of natural cycles. But what we are seeing no longer resembles a balanced cycle. These are fires ravaging ecosystems weakened by prolonged droughts, extreme temperatures, and habitat fragmentation. Today, they are breaking successive records of devastation and, each year, seem even more intense, extensive, and difficult to control. Each passing year, Europe seems to burn a little more.

When fire returns before the forest has time to recover, nature starts over a little poorer.

Still, the news continues to focus almost exclusively on human and material losses. Destroyed homes can be rebuilt. Families need—and should—receive all possible support. Every human life saved matters deeply.

But acknowledging this pain shouldn't prevent us from seeing all the other lives.

The animals don't appear on camera to tell what they've lost. They don't know how to ask for help, they don't occupy municipal shelters, and they can't explain that that forest was the only world they knew.

Perhaps that's why it's so easy to forget them. They die far from the lens, hidden under the smoke and often without even entering the statistics.

They are the silent victims of a catastrophe they did not start and from which they have no way to escape.

When a forest burns, it's not just hectares that disappear. It's nests, burrows, routes, food sources, offspring, and stories we'll never know.

So, the next time images of these fires appear on television, perhaps we can look a little beyond the flames. Somewhere behind that immense curtain of smoke, there is an animal running.

He doesn't know where to go. He doesn't know how much further it is.

He just runs with all his might, trying to save the only thing he has left: his own life.

And perhaps the least we can do is not allow their story to disappear in silence as well.