Question
In Oregon we have alot of wildfires and there's alot of arguments about it. So my question is are wildfires natural? We didn't have fire trucks until 1900's. So what is the process of the forest in regard to fire, without the interference of people?

Answer
Most of the wildfires out West are caused by lightning  storms. And in that sense they are natural. Fires have always burned in the forests way before man settled. They would burn until the rain put them out. Some species of trees need fire to regenerate so fire in this case can be good. The early settlers use fire to clear the land so they could plant crops.
Most of the wildfire control efforts are on those fires that can or are approaching houses. This is here the trucks came in. In some natural areas in the West fires are left to burn themselves out BUT this can cause much damage by killing vast acreages of timber which will grow back a grasses and small trees over time. In my opinion the result of letting the fires burn is not near a enjoyable as the trees and forests that were there. I lean toward controlling the fires for the beauty and the timber resources they can destroy.
Here is a link to more information on Wildfires form a web site on Forestry. This site also has a forum that has many Foresters from the West that can give you their opinion on Wildfires.

http://forestry.about.com/cs/forestfire/a/good_bad_ugly.htm


Here is the link to the Forum if you want to ask them.

http://forums.about.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?nav=messages&webtag=ab-forestry