That's true but since Umathela is said to be a green and brown elf forest, its characteristics are fixed. This is a distinct issue for using population densities and simplistic real world sources to argue that the Umathelans must be slash-and-burn farmers and no other (if anything they would be horticulturists from their peas).
> >Instead an elf would view a forest fire
> >as a natural calamity such as humans would view a plague or
> >a drought.
>I submit that this is a humanocentric viewpoint.
It's not. It's an elvish viewpoint.
>If you require fire
>and/or smoke for your children to be born, fire is not a curse.
Except that trees do not require fire and/or smoke to be born. Many euclaypts have adapted to frequent fires but if there were no fires, they would get rid of these adaptations.
>Mountain Ash is a commo name for Eucalyptus regnans
><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_regnans>
>"Seedling densities of up to 2.5 million per hectare have been
>recorded after a major fire!" "Studies conducted in the Twentieth
>Century suggest that clearfelling is essential to the successful
>germination and growth of seedlings."
The Mountain Ash has adapted to tens of thousands of years of Aboriginal firestick farming. If they weren't regularly burning off the woods (and also extinguishing the megafauna) then other species would predominate.
Secondly Eucalypts prosper by drinking all the deep water and subtly poisoning the soil so that other plant species can't grow well. They are in effect desert trees which makes them an odd choice to have for the coldest part of Umathela.
>Of course, this assumes that regrowth is permitted. Imperial Age
>Umathelans were attempting to exterminate the aldryami.
They succeeded.
--Peter Metcalfe
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