California’s Desert Fauna Will Never Recover. Fire in the Anthropocene has become the environmental equivalent of nuclear war. By Mike Davis In The Nation, prominent political theorist Mike Davis, a California native, discusses the political and environmental backdrop to the wildfires that have swept across the state in recent weeks. "Our burning deserts are regional expressions of a global trend. Mediterranean vegetation has coevolved with fire; indeed, oaks and most chaparral plants require episodic fire to reproduce. But routine extreme fire in Greece, Spain, Australia, and California is now overriding Holocene adaptations and producing irreversible changes in the biota. Although Australia is a close contender, it is California that best illustrates the vicious circle in which extreme heat leads to frequent extreme fires that prevent natural regeneration—and with the help of tree diseases accelerate the conversion of iconic landscapes into sparse grasslands and treeless mountain slopes. And with the native plants, of course, go the native fauna."