[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/forest-service-to-halt-prescrib...
look on the maps for the last fifty years. Its contentious and they do it anyway.
As evidence of the smoke filled past, some of our plants even require fire to germinate! https://www.fire.ca.gov/media/8657/live_w_fire.pdf
The value in regular small fires was understood science 80 years ago and has been a part of forest management for decades. Only in very limited places, generally wooded suburbs, has accumulation of fuels been a meaningful factor.
Talking about fire suppression in the current context is absurd. It's pointing the finger at the 0.01% cause and ignoring the 99.9% cause, which is climate change due to carbon emissions.
Pre-1800, about 1.8 million hectare burned each year in CA: https://www.sierraforestlegacy.org/Resources/Conservation/Fi...
> The idea that US wildfire area of approximately two million ha annually is extreme is certainly a 20th or 21st century perspective. Skies were likely smoky much of the summer and fall in California during the prehistoric period.
And from: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.201...
> Instead, global area burned appears to have overall declined over past decades, and there is increasing evidence that there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago. Regarding fire severity, limited data are available. For the western USA, they indicate little change overall, and also that area burned at high severity has overall declined compared to pre-European settlement.
We have simply been lucky, so far, that mass settlement in an area of the US that experiences very regular fires and 200-year droughts has happened to affect us so little. In the past other civilizations have had to leave the area completely.
Here’s some history [3].
1. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-10-07/newsom-s...
2. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...
3. https://massivesci.com/articles/megafire-california-climate-...
Of course the frequency of forest fires is a function of drought conditions. Fuel aridity is the number 1 driver of wildland fire activity, particularly in the fire season. Fuel aridity in turn is a function of drought conditions, but also temperature. Increasing temperature (due to climate change, for example) increases the aridity, yes, but increasing temperature does not itself lead to drought. Warmer air can carry more moisture. Expected rainfall on the East Coast is expected to increase with climate change, and that would in turn decrease fuel aridity and the chance of fire. The western US had gone through centuries long periods of drought before, and it will again, with or without gw climate change (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0911197107). It's not even clear that you can say we'd not be having so severe a drought were anthropogenic gw were not happening.
And yes, the frequency, and more importantly, the extent and heat of wildfires, is a function of fuel availability. You are correct that controlled burns have been part of forest management practice for decades, but controlled burns are much too infrequent, and are frequently opposed for a variety of reasons (limited time of year, becoming more dangerous due to drought, local opposition, air quality concerns, budget issues, etc.). Can you show, with data, that there has been a decrease in fuel availability? I doubt it. Though increased fuel density is in turn a function of other things besides fire suppression.
Droughts happen with and without the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere. The western US has gone through very prolonged droughts before, and it will again, with or without increases in temperature.
[0]https://i.redd.it/czk2mupwpaa81.png [1]https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/nature/firehistory.htm