By Tim Romano

The 2012 drought and fire season here in the West will surely go down as one of the worst years ever, in terms of number of destroyed homes and acreage and money lost. And the scary thing is we're just over the halfway mark.

What many people don't think about is what that destruction can do to the habitats of fish and game. While fire can obviously have positive long-term effects for overgrown forests, it can be pretty nasty in the short term – especially to rivers. And the damaging effects might last for years or even decades later.