Florida is a fire ecology, a wilderness which has evolved to frequent fires (caused by our 100+ thunderstorms per year). The plants and animals and even habitats are not permanent, and there is constant change and growth. There is very little climax forest in Florida. However, we get lots of rain, too, so truly devastating fires are rare, and most areas recover relatively quickly. The new growth is good for biodiversity in general and for animal communities in particular.

Unfortunately, we've had gradually worsening droughts throughout my lifetime, and the wetlands have been either drying up, or deliberately filled in, drained or paved over. We are getting more and more frequent fires, and they are worse in their effects. Most of our commercial forests were cut down long ago, so our land use is more for development than for timber harvesting. And in Florida, just like California, the drought is very real. Less water is falling on the state, we're draining and pumping more of it out, and paving over or planting in the natural reserve and recharge areas. We're mining our water, and then we are just dumping it at sea without really using it for any useful purpose. As a friend of mine in the environmental biz likes to put it, "We live in a swamp and we're running out of water."

Out west, there is a lot of commercial pressure to "manage" wildlands to maximize timber reserves and promote recreational or sports use, or to protect badly thought out development. This means spotting smaller fires early and putting them out quickly has been a priority, which as you point out, have created conditions that make the inevitable large fires more devastating and harder for the land to recover from.

Enlightened forestry pros long ago recognized how short-sighted our land management practices were for the long-term maintenance of renewable forest resources. Managing for short-term profit will eventually cause losses in the long run. Sound familiar? And its not just forests we're talking about either, similar situations occur in agricultural and fisheries contexts, flood control and land reclamation, and development in general. When I lived in Silicon Valley it struck me that some of the most productive agricultural land in the Santa Clara Valley had been paved over for commercial and residential use; offices and homes which could have been placed anywhere. California's great semi-arid Central Valley used to be America's Serengeti, vast grasslands covered with huge herds of herbivores preyed on by the wolves and bears (like the extinct one on the state flag now). It is now intense corporate farming, mechanized agriculture made possible only by fossil water, internal combustion engine transport and "illegal" immigrant labor.

This debate goes way back, all the way to the conflict between the John Muir and Gifford Pinchot schools of how wilderness should be managed. But it seems to me, "managed wilderness" is an oxymoron. It is a contradiction in terms we could afford when there was so much of it all around us. But not any more, or as much. It doesn't hurt to piss over the side of boat, but dumping the town sewage in the river is something else again. I love the wilderness, but I'm not sentimental about preserving it at all costs at the expense of human welfare and at the cost of human suffering. But utilizing the land for public benefit is NOT the same as exploiting it for private profit. But we CAN do both! If we're smart about it, we can have our cake and eat it too, just not all we want, not all at once, and not all the time.