Every year, somewhere on Mallorca or the south of France.
I don't think it's Nature playing games, more likely the doings of deep-rooted hatred and envy, hired and paid for by property developers unable to get planning permission for virgin territory... that's less likely in Spain, these days. La crisis again. Can't sell what they already have. Sometimes, it's the owners of small herds of sheep and goats that they free to go graze the lower mountain slopes here; they burn off the bushes so that the new growth is edible for the stock, and occasionally they lose control, at which time it's a good plan to blame hikers and tourists in boots and shorts. Shorts, in these mountains, are not a good idea: the bushes are infested with ticks waiting for passing livestock.
One of the versions going the rounds here some years ago was that they tie a burning, fuel-soaked rag to the butt of a hare and send it racing away to imaginary freedom and real immolation in the maquis and woods...
Rob C