Because I live in the basin, I wasn't even aware of the beetle problem until the fires (our useless local media in non-action, again). Watching on TV, it sure looks like there are vast stretches where trees are dead. The TV news reporters have been emphasizing that the dead trees are providing fuel for the fires. It's good that Lake Arrowhead has been making people cut down the dead trees, but it doesn't look like anyone did anything about the trees in the wilderness areas, or even those near schools and such.
There was some dude making the rounds of talk radio last night being interviewed as a forestry expert. His claim was that the Native Americans used to practice good forestry, which was stopped when all the Indians were removed from the land. He sounded like an environmental extremist until he said we should be doing what the natives used to do, and thin the living trees, remove dead trees, and use "low-level" burns (natural and man-made) to remove dead leaves and such on the forest floor.
While I don't disagree with him about the solution, I found it annoying that he conveniently excuses the work of the extreme environmentalists over the past 35 years or so by placing the time when things went wrong at about the 1890's or so. Sigh.
Thanks to the enviro-nazis the trees on public land are untouchable. Now they're burned to ash....so how is this a benefit to the environment. They don't know and they don't care....as Feinswine said today.....she doesn't want the loggers to make any money! That's some priority with lives and property loss in the billions.