Large-scale wildfires have recently swept through 475,000 hectares of central Chile (1), displacing thousands of households. The affected region is located in a globally threatened biodiversity hotspot (2, 3). The suspected causes of the wildfires were a combination of human activities, record high temperatures, and an extended drought, attributed to anthropogenic climate change (4). The current forest management system of monoculture plantations, which have replaced native forest with fast-growing exotic tree plantations that facilitate fire propagation, also exacerbated the fires (5).