MOTHER NATURE IS STILL A GOOD TEACHER

Fires are burning around the globe -- literally -- and environmentalists are wringing their hands. They are concerned that the planet's ecosystem is being altered so drastically that calamity is all but certain. Blame is being laid on El Nino and Central American farmers and lightning, a curious group of collaborators.

Time magazine recently had a story that included a graphic illustration of the blazes straddling the equator. In addition to the lost vegetation and wildlife, there are concerns about air pollution and the ability of remaining forests to produce adequate oxygen to sustain life over the next -- roughly speaking -- million years or so.

Texas and other southern states have seen first-hand what fires in Mexico and Central America can do to the air. Smoke drifting over thousands of miles produced severe haze and terrible air quality. Southeast Missouri has even had some samples of the effects of those fires.

In Florida, hot, rainless weather has produced conditions that are just right for hundreds of fires set by lightning. The best efforts to fight the blazes are all but futile, because the forces of nature far outmatch anything mere humans can devise.

Like most calamities, this years fires are, for the most part, natural in origin, although there have been instances of fires that were deliberately set for agricultural reasons that seem to be questioned by some environmentalists. But they overlook the fact that fires have long been used as agricultural tools.

Native Indians on this continent realized hundreds of years ago that emulating nature and the natural fires set by lightning produced lush green vegetation essential to game animals. Not so many years ago, farmers in the Ozarks routinely set the woods ablaze to spur new growth on which roaming herds of cattle could feed. Ranchers on the Kansas prairie continue to set fires each spring for the same purpose, all with the blessing of agriculture experts.

Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned, and a good classroom is Yellowstone National Park. Ten years ago, about a million acres in the park went up in flames, nearly a tenth of the total park area. Remember the wailing and moaning? The fires had been touched off by lightning, and valiant efforts to put out the fires were in vain. The fires burned for nearly three months until winter snows extinguished them.

Now scientists are looking at the results of those fires. It turns out they were beneficial in almost every respect. Within another decade, vegetation is expected to be 10 times as diverse as it was before the fires.

It also is interesting to note that one reason the Yellowstone fires lasted so long is because Smokey Bear had been so sucessful in preventing fires over a long period of time. The result was a tinderbox waiting to go up in smoke at the first opportunity. As a result, Yellowstone officials have been setting small fires each year to clear away undergrowth.

All in all, the ring of fire that is burning this year is part of a natural cycle. We might not like the burning and smoke today, but in a few years we might see that the fires were for our own good.