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As for forest management, you're right. The culprits are the small trees choking the forests that are usually culled by the small, fast moving fires that occur naturally. These things are so dense they are known as 'doghair thickets'. A tree might be 4 inches in diameter but be close to a hundred years old- neither normal or healthy in a ponderosa pine.

The key is to go in and clear them out so that in a given area there is a healthy balance of young and old trees with upwards of 10ft in between each tree.

Trouble is, the little trees have no value to timber companies as they are more trouble than they are worth and there aren't enough funds for legions of forest service personnel to go forth with saws and get the job done. The cost effective solution is a series of perscribed burns which sometimes get out of hand and tend to freak people out (they think that someone is trying to burn the whole forest down). Another thing that many people don't grasp is the magnitude of the task. Those forests in AZ are the size of some states! If the Sierra Club et al, truly cared, they'd get volunteers out and start chopping.

Just for comparison:

Northern Arizona forests in 1909 (click for larger image)

Northern Arizona forests in 1990s (click for more info on the evolution of this area)