In recent years, Californians have had to deal with some deadly and destructive wildfires. But in fact, this part of the western United States has been shaped by fire for millennia.
In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we hear about new research from California into a decades-old mystery: the extinction of large animals at the end of the Ice Age. It’s providing some worrying lessons from history about the way humans, fire and ecosystems interact.
