Hi Glenn,

It's a great question and I'll defer to foresters who go into the fire zones afterward before speculating whether some of the burns might be beneficial.

The largest fires are in coast range oak chaparral and not mountain forest. The chaparral grasslands are impacted by non-native species that are more flammable than the native grasses they have crowded out, so once the catch they're nearly impossible to put out. Controlled burns in winter and targeted grazing can help reduce fuels and fire damage but I don't know if either is possible in areas larger than 300k acres that are presently burning. The oaks that dot the hills will survive low, slow fire but not the giant blazes we observe today.

The mountain forests are a different tale. First, the Sierra forests have almost all been logged and in many cases more that once. Because we primarily clearcut and replant with a single species, the resulting monoculture forest isn't fire-resistant. It's also the case that historical fire suppression tends to allow the buildup of understory fuels so that when it does burn, fires tend to run fast and hot, and propogate up into the canopy of trees that might otherwise have survived in the past. IIUC fire suppression is best when combined with mechanical thinning (removing small, stunted trees while leaving mature, spread out specimens) and controlled burns in winter-spring.

Our forest ecology is changing due to our shorter winters and hotter, longer summers. Everyone who hikes into the high country observes this on the trail, as tree zones are shifting up the mountain. This process heat-stresses and kills the cooler zone trees, e.g., hemlocks at lower altitudes are dying and lodgepole pines are appearing higher than they once did. Also, most conifers now seem susceptible to bark beetles, which have killed Sierra trees by the tens of millions. Longer winters and colder wintertime temps once kept them in check.

In sum, certain fires could be beneficial but for the most part, they're doing more harm than good. Overhauling wildland management is necessarily very complex and also must be coordinated among federal, state and private land. It's certainly the case that past practices need review and overhaul, because the new status quo is not working.