alt Hacker NewsI'm saying it doesn't matter. If the forest is getting the regular burning it needs anyway someone lighting an additional fire at a different time isn't going to make any difference.
Not that you shouldn't be careful, you can get yourself hurt in a natural fire (but it shouldn't be such a large fire that it kills you). Leave no trace should be your goal. Even if fire itself is something that doesn't matter, there are lots of other parts of leave no trace that that will also result in less fires.
It's pretty reasonable to think that a person-caused fire will be way worse than a natural fire, since the people ones will be distributed far closer to other people-things, like houses and other people.