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NO First, we are not the only players here, and second, the more care we take to keep the natural cycle as normal as possible, the better the natural system will take care of us. Megafires are an entirely different kind of fire, and merely expecting and avoiding them is insufficient. Managing the forest a little bit, and using controlled fires both almost eliminates the danger of megafires, and reduces the damage of fires on the ecosystem and on the human systems. Just one paragraph in the article encapsulates that nicely. Please re-think your human-centric approach to problems with nature. At least read this one paragraph. >>In Southern Oregon in 2021, when the massive Bootleg Fire reached a 30,000-acre nature preserve managed by the Nature Conservancy, flames were shooting 200 feet in the air. But when the fire got to an area that had been carefully managed, it suddenly changed. The flames dropped down and moved more slowly. For years, researchers in the area had been testing different “treatments” for the forest, thinning out trees in some areas and conducting prescribed burns. When the fire came through, it demonstrated what worked: In photos taken a few months after the fire, trees were still alive in the area that had been both thinned and treated with controlled burns. Across a road, in an untreated area, nearly everything had burned. (When a fire is so extreme, it can also sterilize the soil in some cases, making it hard for any new trees to grow back.) |