Israeli experts lamented that it could take as much as 30 years to fully recover from the wave of fires that ravaged the country over the past two weeks.

While hundreds of homes were damaged or destroyed by the flames (mostly in the Haifa and Jerusalem areas) huge tracts of forests, including entire nature reserves, were decimated.

Current estimates are that well over 35,000 acres of forest were destroyed, and much of the wildlife living there was killed.

“While some of the foxes and hyenas and other animals managed to flee the fires, others were not so lucky. Snakes and turtles for example, did not survive,” Uri Naveh, head of the Nature and Parks Authority Jerusalem District, told Israel’s Ynet news portal.

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