Actually, Phil, that is a funny story -- it turns out that the Indians DID manage the forests. They would periodically set fire to it, in order to thin the understory, so it was easier to hunt.
So when the English came over in the early 1600s, it looked like a park -- they were amazed! They did not know why the forests looked that way, but they were delighted.
Then the Indians were essentially exterminated -- disease and war and so forth. No one was setting the fires anymore. The woods were choked with underbrush. The settlers and their descendants were puzzled.
I'm not saying "light it all on fire," but it turns out that managed forests are less likely to experience the occasional catastrophic mega-fire.
