Why all these fires???

 As the Fall rains bring an end to most of the fires that have burned a record amount of land, destroyed small towns and many homes the same old question comes to surface:   Why do we have these catastrophic fires year after year?    Frustration and anger is what follows after the smoke begins to settle, especially from those that have lost everything.   There is the sad story of a ranching family that had a grazing allotment on the Plumas National Forest in California and are out looking for their cattle.  They have found many dead, some needing to be euthanized and a few roaming along forest roads in search of water and feed.  They, along with many others are angry with mismanagement of the National Forests over the last decades.    They don't blame the local Forest Service employees, but those in Washington DC that have no understanding of how the forest should be managed at the local level.   Fires have always been part of the ecosystem.  Over the last 100+ years we have suppressed fires letting the forest floor build up with an understory of brush and small trees.   Years of uneven-aged management on both federal forests and private timber lands creating second growth plantations susceptible to fire under extreme fire conditions.   Then there is climate change as the summers become longer and warmer with less rainfall and snowpack in the winters.   Over the last 10 years more and more conifers at the lower elevation are dying from drought and insect infestations increasing the fire risk. 

What is the answer--more controlled fires, more thinning of forests, more defensible space around communities and homes in the forests?  Some of this is happening, but not to the scale and intensive it should be.   No doubt funding is insufficient, but think of all the money going to suppression.   How is the OSU School of Forestry addressing this in their curriculum?   

When will there be more action?