Whilst there were several mention of "good fires" and "bad fires" in the previous posts it seems that many people misread or glossed over that fact.
If a fire burns to hot & / or fierce (eg. the fires currently in Vic etc.) then the fauna AND the flora (fire resistent or not) dies.
You see the wild fires we are currently experiencing are so hot and fast that the wildlife cannot get away in time and also because they are so hot to seeds which are fire-resistant (and some "require" fire to germinate) cannot handle the heat and die themselves.
The fires that the Australian environment needs are the ones that the countryside has acustomed it to - slow yearly grass-burning type fires. The fires are relatively slow moving so fauna has a chance to escape and as the fires are not overly hot they do not completely destroy the fire-resistant seeds.
Apparently (this is apparently because I was told this by a Parks and Wildlife Ranger and do not have the article to back it up) if we had a wild fire in the same area every 5 years then in 100 years the soil would not be able to support life at all, it would be completely dead.
