[wholien]

went on a short hike around Mammoth Lakes in California with a retired US Forest Service guy, and he told us a story about how they manually surveyed an area that had been fire suppressed for many years. They counted the number of trees per acre, and compared that to the number of trees per acre to an area near Mammoth (Bishop maybe) that hadn't been fire suppressed.

I don't remember the specifics anymore, but basically there were far fewer trees per acre in the area that did not have fire suppression, but the trees were far healthier / bigger as they did not have to compete for resources. While the trees in the fire suppressed area were smaller and made for a less healthy ecosystem.