Re: Forest Fires - off topic (Was RE: Testing)

[Dirk Wright <wright@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>
>Thanks for the ecological clarification. I do appreciate the positive 
>aspects of fires in regeneration, however the size of the fires is 
>awesome.  In the UK if we had a fire which consumed 100 acres there 
>would be uproar and demands for the government to resign for poor 
>management of the fire services ;-)
>

yeah, well, you folks in the UK are all packed together on a tiny speck of an 
island, what do you expect??? <gg>

>As the forested areas in the world become smaller and smaller, surely 
>the wildlife in those areas is threatened as their potential habitat 
>becomes smaller. There must have been a lot of roasted animals and 
>insects in those fires - which are still burning.....
>

yes, fires are not entirely positive. But fortunately one of the things that 
sometimes gets really damaged are the non-native invasive species. We *want* 
those things to burn! With the globalization of business, we are seeing more 
and more non-native invasives species, both plant and animal. Those things 
are not adapted to fires (usually at least), so they are eliminated therein. 
One example is the praire of the american midwest. Several non-native grasses 
have taken over, and it turns out that at least one of them is explosively 
flammable. Burn baby, burn!

And yes, the forest service makes some goofs. Sometimes really big goofs. 
Like this year with the fires that burned through the nuclear labs at Los 
Alamos in New Mexico. heads are rolling over that one. Recently, near where I 
live, a "controlled" burn became a wildfire in the Shenandoah national park. 
more heads rolled. 

But, new spring wildflowers look *really* good against a jet black charcoal 
background, don't you think? <g>

-- 
Be Seeing You.
Dirk Wright
If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
		-- Harry S Truman

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