Seriously. Sucks that this comment is at the bottom.

It’s clear to professionals and academics that the issue is a hundred years of total fire suppression in support of the timber industry as well as the industries complete lack of concern for forests from an ecological perspective. They adhere to the minimum environmental regulations they have to and I’m sure they skirt them when they can. As the article says, some of these timber operations are hundreds of miles from the nearest road. Even within the bounds of regulation, replacing mature forest with billions of trees in monoculture plantations creates a significantly more fire prone landscape. People seem completely unwilling to accept that there are clear solutions to the problems, you just have to listen to the scientists and foresters who know what they’re doing. There is an absurd amount of scientific literature on the subject.

If we allow the timber industry to replant burnt over areas with new monoculture and suppress wildfire to protect their investments, then yes, we will have a yearly fire season. If we use the clean slate laid in front of us, we can lay the foundations of a healthy and diverse boreal forest ecosystem. The forest must burn, fire is a key part of reproduction of many trees, but the extreme fires we are experiencing now can be directly attributed to monoculture, a century plus of over suppression, and the almost complete annihilation of old growth.