Summer should be all about spending time outside, but with all of the fires burning through our national parks, it is near impossible. I am one of the people who simply sat there as I could only watch as the mountains were up in flames. As someone who lives very close to a huge national park, watching thousands of acres of these national parks get ruined is heartbreaking.

I am just like many people who just want to get outside and spend time with my family in these beautiful places. But when 1,078 fires burn in one year, in the same area, covering over 600,000 acres in ash, it is nearly impossible.

We should still be able to have campfires and campsites because many people use camping as a great way to be with their family but we need to have rules and guidelines. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, there was 2,146 human-caused fires in 2021..

Everyone should have to properly know how to start a fire and put it out because many of the fires are caused by people. According to the NPCA National Parks Conservation Association, the Woolsey Fire near Santa Monica was due to human action. There has to be something limiting the amount of fire started by people. One reason could be because there isn’t very many park rangers compared to a couple years ago. There has been a staffing decrease in most of the national parks by 10-20 percent in the last 10 years.

One time, I went up to Rocky Mountain National Park, it made me super dismayed to see that it was raining ash as we drove up there, the orange and yellow sky made such a beautiful place way less beautiful.

We can all agree that we should all be able to camp and do other outdoor activities, but there has to be a way to do these things safely. We need to do something about the number of fires in caused by people. Over the last two decades, there has been a 3% increase in fire activity per year.

Yes, we maybe should be able to go camping and fun activities, but there has to be rules. There has to be a solution, besides, we need more park rangers. But we need at least a designated place for fires, or something because we can’t afford to have over 2,000 human caused fires every year, that number needs to start decreasing.