Even though fire is a natural process and necessary for the regeneration of some species, the forests we have left in this country are pretty much our last vestiges of wilderness habitat. I don't really know anything about it, but I would think that fact might lead to some shift in the cost/benefit analysis of wildfires.

Again, without really knowing, it seems to me that burned land and the flora and fauna that inhabited that land prior to burning are dependent to a greater or lesser degree on unburned adjacent lands of similar character and flora/fauna population to serve as incubators for species recovery. As forests and wildnerness shrink, wildfires and other natural cataclismic (spelling?) events destroy or affect a much larger percentage of what remains. I can not help but think the day will come, as wilderness and forest continue to fall to development, when a threshhold will be crossed from which it will not be possible for wilderness to recover. I don't know if it is a valid analogy or not, but I think of pruning a shrub. Some pruning helps it. Too much pruning weakens, and eventually kills it.

Janie