I saw an article about fires in southern Georgia recently. One of the fires has burned a huge area of more than 200,000 acres. The fire even has a name, the Honey Prairie Fire. You know it’s a really big fire if it even has a name. Not only does it have a name, it has a Wikipedia entry. 200,000 acres is a huge area: 400 square miles. Today I found out that almost the entire area is in the Okefenokee Swamp and particularly the national wildlife refuge. According to this page it looks like about two-thirds of the wildlife refuge has burned. Here’s a map showing the extent of the fire, but keep in mind that even the green part has also burned, it just burned back in May when the fire was first started by lightning. Maybe not so surprising, the Okefenokee Swamp is closed right now.
I don’t know how worrisome any of this is. The swamp is supposed to catch fire every now and then and clear out underbrush. However there has been a really bad prolonged drought in the swamp, so bad that some of the places where they take canoe trips are just dry ground now.