From the text ... 'Madagascar is aflame. Every year, fires consume up to half of the island's vast grasslands and thousands of square kilometers of its rainforests and secondary brush.... Madagascar's fire problem is a source of long-standing conflict between the sate and the tantsaha. For more than a century, both the French colonial administration and the independent Malagasy state, together with outside conservation interests, have attempted to stop or at least slow the widespread burning to protect this naturalist's paradise. But the tantsaha continue to burn the land for purposes such as pasture renewal and cropfield preparation....Instead of arguing against burning, the most realistic stance is that there has always been fire in Madagascar and there always should be. In the vast highland and western parts of the country with an extended dry season, fire is both a natural part of landscape processes and a key cultural landscape-management tool....Fires will continue to be a key tool for agricultural management, and local communities should be given an important role in this process.'