Comment by marcus_holmes

If the problem in California is anything like the problem in Australia, it's that it's not primal forest. We clearcut all the ancient tress, so what's left is secondary growth.

The huge old trees cut out the light reaching the forest floor, so there was less underbrush to burn. It absolutely did burn, regularly, but did little damage because the fire never got hot enough to burn the trees.

But with the secondary growth, it's vulnerable to fire. So we have to burn it often to clear the fuel load before it gets too much. But there's a lot of opposition to this kind of preventative burning, and then the fuel load builds up until we get a monster bush fire, everything burns down, and it all has to start again.

We need about 100 years with no major bush fires, and no logging, to regenerate the first-growth forest that evolved here. But that's a major economic asset and the chances of it not being logged are tiny.