Like ranchers in Kansas, or pastoralists in the Serengeti, at specific times of year the Malagasy burn their grasslands to improve forage quality. The fresh green growth, which follows fire, is critical to cattle nutrition at the end of the dry season. Fire also has numerous other uses. Fallow fields and uncultivated grasslands are burned to prepare them for planting. In highland tapia woodlands, fire helps maintain the ecological dominance of the pyrophilic and economically useful Uapaca bojeri tree, A source of fruit as well as habitat for a wild silkworm.
People also burn the tapia woodland undergrowth to control populations of silkworm parasites.
Finally, preventive burns are used to protect houses and crops from the wildfires that result from dangerous fuel buildup. To highland farmers then, fire is as normal a tool as the spade or the ax. In contrast, urban Western society views vegetation fires as spectacular and out of the ordinary. Wildfires at the urban fringe destroy homes and threaten lives, as occurred in Oakland Hills in 1991 or Greece in 1998. While the Western public is beginning to appreciate the natural role of fire in ecosystems, ecologically overdue fires such as the 1989 Yellowstone conflagration attract considerable attention.