Wildlife Window: Time to consider the role of fire in nature

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So many great things Humanity has accomplished were made possible by probably the most important accomplishment of all.

We learned to use fire as a tool.

First, we built fires in pits. Eventually, we learned to make candles then whale-oil lamps then kerosene lamps. Soon, we had natural gas street lamps and then gas lamps inside our buildings. And then we used fire to burn the coal to make electricity for our lamps.

Fire became the light of Humanity.

Without fire jets would not cross the sky and cars would not cross the land. Without fire birthday cakes would be less awesome and barbecue simply would not be.

But for all we came to know about fire as a tool that much and more we did not understand about fire as a natural process. Until recently.

Historical accounts ramble about many noteworthy people who considered various interactions among wildlife species and their environment. Some go as far back as Aristotle. But the connectedness of things in Nature had no specific identity until German eclectic, Ernst Haeckel, gave it the name “ecology” in 1866.