This is my field of study and one of my professors was a park ranger at Saguaro. This is the result of failed fire suppression policies from the last 100 years.
Forests in places like Arizona and New Mexico are so incredibly overgrown that their basically a “tender box” (his words). They need to be burned, but it’s now at great risk. There are some places that need to be burned but can’t for this reason. They’re going to burn and cause massive damage one day, whether by government forces or by citizens
It's certainly a conundrum.
