Firefighters in Los Angeles continue to battle devastating wildfires that have killed at least 27 people and left thousands of homes destroyed. A new fire also provoked evacuation orders north of the city.
As Stacy Morford, environment and climate editor for The Conversation in the US, put it: “It’s every Californian’s nightmare.”
Today on The Conversation Weekly podcast, we’re revisiting an interview we ran in late 2023 with Emily Lindsey, a paleoecologist who works at the La Brea tar pits archaeological site in Los Angeles, about a wildfire warning from southern California’s ice age history.
Her research has helped shed light on a decades-old mystery about the extinction of large animals that provides some worrying lessons from history about the way humans, fire and ecosystems interact.
The interview with Emily Lindsey originally aired in November 2023. This episode was written and produced by Katie Flood. Sound design was by Eloise Stevens and Michelle Macklem, and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. Gemma Ware is the executive producer of the show.
Newsclips in this episode are from CNN, CNN-News 18, City News and NBC News.
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Emily Lindsey receives funding from the National Science Foundation, which funded some of the research reported in this article.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.