While the raging fires that laid waste the city of Lahaina, including a centuries-old banyan tree, in the Maui island of Hawaii is a pinching reminder of what a careless fire can do to a climate-change-dried earth, human-caused infernos are nothing new.
A recent study by scientists at Marshall University, US, has revealed that human-lit fires roared through southern California and caused the extinction of several large mammals – 13,000 years ago.
La Brea in Los Angeles is known for its tar pits. These pits have trapped thousands of animals in the last 50,000 years, preserving their bones. These bones reveal much.
Scientists from Marshall University analysed radiocarbon dates of 172 specimens from seven extinct and one extant species. They found that there had been a “complete extirpation of mega-fauna and unprecedented fire activity.” From sediment cores of Lake Elsinore, they found out that, about 13,200 years ago, “charcoal accumulation rates” increased over 30 times. A radical shift in vegetation was also inferred, which “appears to have been triggered by human-ignited fires in an ecosystem stressed by rapid warming, a mega-drought and a millennial-scale trend toward the loss of large herbivores from the landscape.”