In response to the subtitle asking whether these species can help revive burnt areas: I doubt it. It is true that some species are specially adapted and even need burnt vegetation to thrive (eg. There’s a bird species I believe endogenous to the Yosemite area whose name I can’t recall). However, these species occupy a particular niche much like I expect fungi or bacteria do. For them to restore an ecosystem naturally…
I urge you to read about indigenous wildland fire management techniques. Also check out the 'forest fire' cellular automata model. You speak of niches as being exclusive, but ecosystems are composed of bubbling foams of overlapping, interacting niches, which merge, split, re-combine, etc. as the ecosystem progresses through modes of dynamic equilibrium. Any wildland will have fires; a mechanism for integrating those fires into the ecosystem's dynamics is inevitable, because nature operates as a ruthlessly exploitative force when a new element is introduced to an ecosystem. Thus, a niche is identified, and organisms fill it. TFA reports only on the inevitable conclusion of the natural course of things.
> just don’t see this as some kind of panacea
Why do you think the author is arguing that it is?
