[vikramkr]

Still not pedantic enough. Ecosystems aren't designed and they aren't trying to reach levels of organization - they just are. There's no concept of "better." The current equilibrium for the climate in these regions of the west involves frequent fires. Stopping fires has disrupted the ecosystem by moving it away from the equilibrium state, resulting in situations conducive to much larger and more destructive fires (destructive to humans - to the ecosystem defining "destructive" is difficult, and the fires likely move the system back to equilibrium).

I'm not sure what your argument is trying to accomplish- its pretty clesr to anyone reading that the discussion is about how the ecosystem has evolved such that forest fires are an important and integral part of maintaining equilibrium, and pushing the system into disequilibrium is a root cause of the current fire disaster. I could at least respect a pedantic technically correct argument, but technically, ecosystems arent trying to reach any level of organization and the concept of "better" does not apply to ecosystems- theres no moral or other ranking to biomes!

[pvaldes]

> There's no concept of "better."

Such concept exists and is a clear one in fact. In ecology is called the climax of an ecosystem.

[vikramkr]

I think your ecology textbooks are a few decades out of date. Monoclimax theory is obsolete[0]. Its much more accurate to consider the equilibrium state than to imagine an ecosystem as working towards some idealized climax. And "better" is a very subjective human-centric term - its utterly meaningless without context (e.g. this ecosystem is better for supporting higher levels of biodiversity). Try asking a beachgoer and a skier whether summer or winter is "better" and see how far that scientific discussion gets you.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climax_community#Continuing_us...