Amongst the American government there remains an obstinate refusal to incorporate ecological science. Intensive post-fire salvage logging mines forests of their potential to regenerate. A burned forest is fertile ground for rebirth - remove the nutrients and a much reduced landscape of vegetational communities will emerge.

The New York Times > National > Amid a Forest's Ashes, a Debate Over Logging Profits Is Burning

For 120 days in 2002, a colossal wildfire scarred a half-million acres of Southern Oregon and Northern California, leaving behind a charred landscape that has turned into fertile soil for a conflict over how to manage the public forests.
The Forest Service's plan for a large salvage logging operation on the site of wildfire, called the Biscuit fire, is reopening old wounds and threatens to undercut the shaky truce between environmentalists and the timber industry.