alt Hacker NewsCurious about the bushfire and recovery there after, found this from Lonely Planet (2023)..
A dangerous mix of hot weather, highly flammable eucalyptus oils in the air and strong winds meant that flames quickly scorched their way through the vegetation, burning almost half of the land in the process.
Australia’s native flora and fauna regenerates and even thrives after burns; in fact, some seeds will only germinate after a fire.
Kangaroo Island has turned out to be astonishingly resilient. Just 48 hours after the flames died down, a rock-like fungus started growing on the ash.
As the fungus digested the ash, it changed the pH levels of the soil, allowing other microorganisms and eventually plants to take root. Some of the plants, says McKelvey, hadn’t been seen for decades. Unlike on the Australian mainland, there were no rabbits to eat the new growth – meaning there was nothing to hold back the regeneration.
It helped that donations flooded in from all over the world after the fires. This money helped to eliminate some of the feral pigs and cats that had been damaging the local ecosystem and killing endangered wildlife.
Three years on, Flinders Chase National Park is as lush as ever, with thick undergrowth providing shelter for the island’s camera-shy wallabies.
The only reminder of the fires that ravaged this land? The blackened branches of eucalyptus trees poking out from the greenery below, giving the landscape an eerie, post-apocalyptic air.
Providing a nesting ground for birds and habitat for insects, even these uncomfortable reminders will disappear in a couple of years, as they get swallowed up by the island’s resilient vegetation.
https://www.lonelyplanet.com/news/kangaroo-island-south-aust...
> Australia’s native flora and fauna regenerates and even thrives after burns; in fact, some seeds will only germinate after a fire.
Indeed. As is the case in most places where there are wildfires. I suppose using the word "devastation" is appropriate - fires create a radical change in the local environment - but the change is a necessary one for the local flora and fauna.
Perhaps because humans like things to stay the same, and perhaps because these sorts of natural, inevitable changes aren't that common - most of us don't regularly see fires in our local environment - we label this change in an emotive way: devastating, despite the necessity of the thing.