Quote:
Originally Posted by Pinhead
My understanding is that fire is part of the natural cycle. Clears out the undergrowth and puts a lot of nitrogen back into the soil, or something like that. They do intentional controlled burns for a reason.
If I'm correctly remembering a late 90s conversation with a Yosemite park ranger, a lot of the current wildfires are so bad because we squelched the natural fires for decades, letting the fuel accumulate. But the Pelosi and Boxer voters need to keep their homes near nature intact.  |
Yup. Instead of managing the fire cycle, agencies simply put fires out in the past, even if they were no threat. This led to BIG problems. Many plant species are fire dependent, that means they require periodic burns in order to maintain a healthy ecosystem. When you keep fire out of an area for years, the undergrowth gets abnormally thick, the fire tolerant/dependent species die off and are replaced with species that go up like Roman candles when torched.
It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature.