We can and should slow climate change, selectively thin choked forests, restrict development in the WUI, and return fire to its pre-colonial role on the landscape. But none of our futures is free of smoke.
As someone who uses a lot of fire each year to restore conservation lands to native habitat, I appreciate your reference to precolonial fire. There are a lot of papers about natives, even pre Columbian Americas and Australian Aborigines terraforming the lands with fire for thousands of years before Europeans settled here and eventually Smokey the Bear attempted to end the ecology they created.
As someone who uses a lot of fire each year to restore conservation lands to native habitat, I appreciate your reference to precolonial fire. There are a lot of papers about natives, even pre Columbian Americas and Australian Aborigines terraforming the lands with fire for thousands of years before Europeans settled here and eventually Smokey the Bear attempted to end the ecology they created.