When the trees are damaged by the Bark Beetle, or by prior fires, the enviros still sue to prevent any harvesting of the remaining wood. A large fire along I-80 near the Calif/Nevada border had a 5 year lawsuit over the harvesting of fire damaged wood. There was a window of time in which the loggers could salvage some of the wood, and the enviros sued to prevent such actions. Now, all of that downed wood is fuel for more fires. Bark Beetle infestations are causing millions of board feet of lumber to be destroyed in N Calif & Oregon & Nevada.
They also have prevented many thousands of acres of grazing permits by ranchers to be utilized.
This creates a buildup of ‘ladder fuels’ which then get a head start & feed into the larger trees. Lightning cannot be controlled, but the correct salvage operations can be controlled.
Add to that the severe cutbacks by forest department workers and the grounding of planes which drop fire retardant slurry, and you have further disasters.
On top of that, the entire departments which are charged with stewardship of the nation’s forest and permeated with the greenies, who are misguided with ideas that are not true.
The environmentalists do the same thing after a huge burn, they will not let the timber companies come and harvest the burned trees and replant. So these burns, one of them over 500 million acres in the Cave Junction, Oregon area are ready for another huge fire, but this time it will burn so hot through the already burned and dead trees, the topsoil will become a glass, sterilized surface where no plants let alone trees will grow for decades.