No, Cwin, it's more than that. They don't just survive in spite of the fire, they actually grow stronger from it. It's the adaptation you describe taken a step farther. Forests that are protected from fire grow sickly and become more fragile, are host to fewer animals, lose their genetic diversity, and eventually starve themselves to death.

Exactly the same as a herd of deer grows sickly and may die off entirely if protected too long from predators; they didn't just find ways to make up for being preyed upon, they found ways to make it a beneficial part of their cycle of life, and eventually a necessary one, one that they came to depend upon.

That is not true. It is good for some forest ecosystems because the forests have adapted to the point where fire is necessary for the germination of seeds. In areas where this does not occur, there is no reason to practice regular burning.

My point in my former post was that it is -far- too generalized to say that fire is a 'good' thing for forests and that they must rely on fire lest they succumb to disease and stagnation.

60% of the Yukon is covered by forests. Any given area burns aproximately every 200 years. Thus, fire is quite uncommon and truly unnecessary for the forest to develop and blossom so to speak. Compare this to a Sierran conifer forest in California and you will find that fire is very much more active and necessary for the development of the forest. Any given area burns aproximately every 4-8 years.

I am not sure where you get your facts from, but as a Canadian who lives through Forest Fires yearly I can tell you they are wrong. While the fires never reach this far south, the affects of them certainly do, and the Yukon and NorthWest Territories of Canada are typically plagued with massive forest fires every summer. So bad in fact that nearly any able bodied Canadian willing to volunteer is bought a plane ticket up north. The military and logging industries all get involved in fighting them.

My information comes from: The Yukon State of Environment Report.

It was published by the Canadian government... I specifically happened upon the 1996 report although the information is more or less the same in all the other reports that I have looked at as I found this nift site with all of em.

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Call me crazy, but I'm willing to bet it is fairly accurate.

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I've included two hyperlinks. The first is more clear cut. If you want, you can look it up in the full report, which can be downloaded from the second link.

Some highlights of the Yukon SOE Report regarding Forests

Place where you can download the full report if you want

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Note, this link actually says 80-200 years. The place I read previously wasn't as broad, however, I think my point that it isn't often stands.

After looking at some sites. Any given area burns every 50 years in the Yukon, however you are talking about a land the size of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland combined. So for any given section of forest to burn every 50 years means nearly yearly fires. Which last year alone was the record fire since 1958 burning 1.8 million hectares of land. This wasn't the only forest fire since 1958 just the record fire. There was 46 fires in 2000, burning 1311 hectares. For the last 50 years of fires please look here.

Wildfire Statistics from 1950 to 2004

Note this is the Yukon Government.

Edit:: As I said the Yukon, NWT, and in fact Northern B.C. are on fire yearly. Remember when talking about Canada you are not talking about an area of land that is comparable to a single state. You are talking about areas of land that numerous states fit into.

It really doesn't matter how many total fires there were as the amount of forest burned varied each time. The point I was making is simply that there is far less total area burned in the Yukon than say a forest in California. The result is that we see more evolutionary mechanisms in place for conifer forests in California are are better adapted to handle fire. In areas where fire is far less frequent, it is not necessary for seed germination and thus regrowth of the forest because those evolutionary mechanisms are not present.

As a result, fire can be extremely beneficial to some forests. However, this does not apply to all forests across the board. If we must, we can move away to more drastic examples such as some Flordian forests where the trees grow out of the water in swamps/bogs. They simply do not catch fire and it is in no way is necessary for their survival.

Case and point: It is an over generalized statement to say that fire is necessary for the regrowth and vitalization of forests. It may be true in some cases, but far from all.

Of course there is far less area burned in the Yukon than California. As the area increases the percentage of forest burned decreases. You can fit two Californias into the Yukon. So to say more of this place burns than that place is a bad comparison.

Also the point you were making was that the Yukon has fires only ever 200 years, and I was pointing out the fact that this is wrong. The Yukon has fires every year. It is just so large that not all of it catches fire except in very rare circumstances. So the number of fires is important, as it shows that each and every year for 54 years there was forest fires in the Yukon.

Florida does controlled burns. Trust me, we can see the smoke from the mainland. And, next time you tell me the wetlands can't burn, I'd like to see you tell that to the rescue workers, too, who won't let us pass the only road out because fire is raging on all sides.

Fire happens yearly to the Florida marshlands. Sometimes it gets really bad, where Florida City is evacuated and so is the prison out in the marshlands near it and parts of the everglades. But it's there, and does help regrowth. We went a few years without growth, and then suddenly, dry season, horrible, horrible fires.

So, in conclusion, Florida does controlled fires. Even on some of their wetlands. Not all, but some.

Erm it's quite simple is it not? There's areas where fires are bound to happen frequently, due to environment, climate and whatnot, and there are areas where natural fires are really rare.

In areas where fires happen frequently, plants that can cope with those are dominant, most prominent those plants that actually need fire as a part of their natural cycles and would die if there was no fire.

In areas where fires are the rare occasion, plants will not necessarily be able to cope with fire so well. Some of them still might, but the majority will burn down and die, to be replaced by other plants that don't mind fire so much.

I live in an area of Germany that has quite large forests, and I can't say I've ever heard of any significant natural forest fire anywhere close. They just don't happen. Still our forests grow and prosper (sort of) and grow pretty old.

Now, wickedly ignoring the really irrelevant argument whether Yukon does or does not burn frequently (stop hijacking, nyah!), that's what it boils down to, is it not? Nature is able to deal with -pretty much- everything. Safe for a complete extinction of all organic life on the planet, I guess. As long as something can grow, nature will recover. As Auseklis said way back then, nature doesn't care, it'll manage.

The question is less whether nature can deal with it than whether the way nature will deal with it will agree with us and our expectation of what "proper" nature should look like. All the preserving nature movements are aimed at preserving nature as we know it.

Remember, we're part of nature, we are still dependant on nature doing what it currently does the way it does. While nature itself won't care if all the amazonas would burn to ashes, we certainly would get quite some problems, being used to those large reaches of forests being one of our main oxygen recyclers.

That said, I think fires (and possibly even floods?) would be a neat addition to Lusternia, because it'd make things more lively and give us new things to do, and make things more realistic.

(So, in a nutshell, saying forests need fire is just as wrong as saying fire is bad for forests, both are extremes not considering the many ways and flavours of nature. Forest fires in Lusternia: cool, yes!)

I'm fully aware that Florida controls burns. That was actually one of the first things I looked at when looking for an example of a forest with trees who seeds are not germinated by fires. However (and I can find the page again if I must), there are areas that rarely if ever catch fire. The seeds of those trees do not require fire to geminate. Thus, without fire, the forest would flourish. It wouldn't just die out, which is really what I've been posting the entire time.

Fire is necessary for some forests, but it is no way a necessary component for all forests.

If you want to go by Hectares of of forest burned, the best I could get was a 5 year statistic for California.

5000 hectares of land burned from 2000 - 2005.

In comparison to the Yukon's 1,828,235 hectares burned in the same time period.

However, percentage wise, more of California can be said to have burned than the Yukon, but that is like me saying more of my house burned than his, when I live in a trailor an he lives in a mansion.

Fires is not simply for Germination. This has been pointed out numerous times by numerous people. Some plants require it. Some do not. Some plants only grow after a fire has cleared the forest to let sunshine down. Some animals would die out with out fire. Not all forests catch fire all the time, but all forests will catch fire eventually and whether it takes 100 years or 1000 years for it to happen, it is a natural cycle of the ecosystem that is needed by more than just the Accacia plant to germinate.

Of course not. I don't think anyone was argueing that, were they?

Alright, perhaps I worded my orginal statement wrong in that Forests must have fire to grow. Yes some will grow without fire, but I was not really pinpointing any particular forest. I was viewing it in the broad sense of fire being good for forests more than fire being good for this forest and bad for that forest. Maybe my wording was not as accurate as it should have been.

My main point was that IRE Forestals have this mindset when you say fire and forest that the devil will rise up and smite people with large burning sticks. Instead of viewing the natural good that can be found in fire and saying. "Ya I hate dealing with fires, but at least this will help this region." Now if you want to pinpoint a forest and say this is good here. SW, fire would be good. It is the exact right climate/terrain/flora/fauna that fire helps. Glomdoring, fire would be bad. It by its nature wants to be a "dead forest".

I can't remember which game it was but I remember some IRE forestal group doing controled fires to create breaks so that a fire wouldn't spread close to home or something... was probably aetolia.

Yep, Aetolia, but those were eventually stopped as they were shown not to work. My character actually did the study that led to that, as it happens. But those weren't meant to enhance the health or growth, only to slow the spread of wildfires.

Sounds like while it's questionable whether forests need fires (I'm of the opinion that it depends on the forest, which makes me wonder how rainforests handle fire) it's not ultimately destructive to nature as a whole. True, the life that's currently in it will NOT like it, but the Grand Scale works a little like Lusternia trade skills: "woops, this potion is all ruined..well, the cooks can make a nice cake with the sugar".

In fact, it puts alot of weight into the argument that human action is still natural, being that nature will find SOME way to use it, whether it be bringing in new lifeforms, changing the whole ecosystem, or tearing up everything and starting all over from step 1.

Thus, you can say that what 'nature' groups are realy doing (whether they know it or not) isn't 'saving nature' but keeping on it's good side because "It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature" (cheesy lightning strike).

Of course the Nature guilds can keep doing what they are doing because being correct or right in your beliefs is not a requirement for good RP (in fact, it tends to be a detriment).

(noting that Cwin would probably NOT like forest fires and would believe you are all raving civy loons for talking like you are)