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Comment by coryrc | Hacker News Reader

In Western forests, I don't believe it's known if they're "a part of nature". What is known is the pre-Columbian population regularly shaped forests using fire and so forests adapted over thousands of years to this, making it required now.

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Fires are started regularly by lightning strikes, and would burn if not for human activity to suppress them.

False. If this would be true, then why we still have an Amazonas forest?. The empirically observed facts show that each time a lightning happens in the rainforest, its effects are short and limited. Is quickly extinguished by the humidity in soil, the rivers or by the daily five-o-clock rain.

Because not all forests are the Amazon, what about PJ forests with minimal humidity? Or the scrub oak chaparral of the California foothills?

Eucalyptus and sequoia are both fire adapted trees.

Before humans in NA it was a lot wetter (not because of humans obv). Fire wouldn't spread as much, just like it doesn't as much in the PNW.

Of course they are, lightning wasn’t a recent invention

It might be in the Bay Area and north bay. Heard thunder, but lighting was not a really a thing until 2020 from what the natives say.

Funny because it's true. Lightning is very rare in California, especially on the coasts. Chaparral is meant to burn at most every 30 years or so, more generally every 100. More often and you risk turning the biome into grassland.

Just because a plant has adapted to survive fire doesn't mean it needs fire.

This is incorrect. Many trees need fire for their seeds.

The natives are really bad for historical record as a proof of negatives.

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