No, I think we have painted ourself into a corner again. You now HAVE to do controlled burns since our previous management avoided any fire at all costs and built up huge fuel stores that would have normally burnt.

Also, sidebar: our ecosystems today are not those that were present thousands of years ago. I can hear the keyboards clacking already, but what I mean is this: ecosystems will come together and then fade away as conditions change - your pine dominant forest may not have even existed as you see it today and instead had a different canopy and/or different understory species. Ecosystems live, breathe, and adapt just like a giant organism and I think that's super cool.

Your soil moisture regime changes? A new community moves in. You have a global cooling or warming? That original community may go extinct, or only some species will remain and those species may not have the same dominance they once had as they are now operating at the edge of their niche conditions rather than under optimal ones.

Look at that, you got me monologuing you sly dog