Let a fire burn. Lose valuable assets, jobs. Create new habitats, return nutrients to the soil. Put the fire out. Preserve assets and jobs, let existing wildlife survive. Create conditions for a larger fire in the future. Clearcut it. Harvest assets, create jobs temporarily, destroy habitat, alter local topography, pollute streams, destroy fish resources, minimize future fires.

There is no answer. I've hiked through hundreds of miles of forests in Northern California where I felt I was in the midst of a laid fire. If anything got going nothing short of Noah's flood would stop it. I used to go to bed at night hoping the Forest Service would send people on horses through if a fire got going.

(There were some trail cleaning crews of inner city kids, or convicts, or "at risk" kids, sort of a summer camp for them. They would build huge fires at night and sit around the ol' campfire. Absolute maroons with bigger, older maroons for counselors.)

But there's no answer for burning, logging, or leaving alone. There's a "yeah, but" for all of them. So I think "they" do their best to balance them, knowing they'll catch hell for whatever "they" do.