I mean, depends on how you define OK. On a geological timescale, sure they’ll be just fine. On a timescale measured in decades to centuries, not necessarily. F

I mean, depends on how you define OK. On a geological timescale, sure they’ll be just fine. On a timescale measured in decades to centuries, not necessarily. Fire is definitely part of many ecosystems. Fire every ten years in a sclerophyll forest? Great! Fire in a rainforest during a bad drought? It’s gone now. Might come back after the next ice age. Also, “forest” environments that have been clear felled and replaced with a monocrop at some point basically have to be managed thereafter. Any properly bad fire through there will leave the ground essentially sterile. Seed bank destroyed. Still black years later. Their natural resilience is gone and it’s our responsibility to manage the fire ecology while they rehabilitate in the same way we need to manage the flora back to something healthier. And then of course, anywhere we’ve built human stuff on the interface. We either defend it or we resign ourselves to the people who live there being homeless after the next fire. Leaving aside whether that’s right or wrong, it’s a very different social pact than the one we’ve operated under so far. Any change to that is going to be generational rather than short term.