Interestingly, fire suppression conducted on the
Redwood forests of
California has led to such a large scale build-up of dried needles that when
fires do start they are not the small, manageable blazes of the past but massively destructive, and hard to suppress, firestorms.
Redwoods have evolved the capacity, through bark that resists combustion, to avoid succumbing to small fires. Unfortunately, theser larger and hotter fires have the capacity to kill the
Redwoods that would have survived without any
human intervention. What
naturalists did not understand was the role played be fire in the
lifecycle of
Redwoods; only the heat produced by the small, natural fires served to open the pinecones of the trees and spread their seeds to produce new generations. Thus, man's shortsightedness has both endangered current trees and decreased the potential for new ones to grow. This is why we must be cautious in applying new
ideas and
technologies, especially upon the natural world.
Semisane