>>681469>elaborate?At high altitudes, there is very little time during the year for carbon fixation. The plants have a short season to pull carbon from the air and put it into the ecosystem. This carbon forms the base of the food chain that allows every other organism to survive. If it is all burned, there is less of everything (e.g. organisms that eat decaying wood, the organisms that eat those organisms, the organisms that eat those organisms etc.) If you are a hunter, there is less stuff to hunt if every body goes up there and burns all the wood. Since everybody thinks think their little fire doesn’t add to this problem, most of the wood gets burned. This is compounded by the fact that no one alive today remembers what nature was like before everyone burned everything or grazed it all with sheep. Unless you are a biologist, or a historian, you know nothing about this, so you keep beating on what is left, ignorant of what you are doing.
At low places, where people visit frequently, the same thing happens. Even though there is a longer season for carbon fixation, human impact is so severe that every scrap of wood is burned. Most people have never seen a forest, especially Europeans. They have seen tree farms or managed woodlands. A forest has standing dead trees and tons of downed material. In heavily camped places, this has all been burned. Again, this wood is the base of the food chain and habitat for organisms. Most people have never been to someplace where all of the downed wood hasn’t been burned, so they think what they are seeing is normal. Only through experience, age, and observation do people realize how little is left. When you revisit someplace you have camped 20 years later, and see your footprints, you begin to understand. Obviously, places with higher turnover are more resilient, but no place is immune.
tl;dr There is nothing left that is pristine, and your little bit contributes to this.
