As one who lives within a few yards of a major western forest, I can tell you this, it isn't just the 'roadless' legislation that has created tinderboxes of mammoth proportions - it is ALL of the envirowacko legislation, lawsuits, propaganda that has all but brought a halt to logging.
We used to have a small mill that provided the major source of employment for locals, the loggers who provided the timber, also thinned the forests and kept them much healthier than any of them appear today - but with all the restrictions from the spotted owl onwards, the logging was halted, the mill went belly up and was sold to a Chinese company and after being dismantled and shipped eastward, now resides in North Korea.
Thank you, Robert Redford and all the rest of the criminally ignorant environmentalists.
My parents had 60 acres in Northern Michigan when I was a kid where we camped on our vacations. It had a logging trail to the middle of it where guys from some timber company would come and look for trees tall and straight enough to become telephone poles. They kept the trail cleared for their benefit but it also made it great for us because we didn't have to keep it cleared and we could get back to the fun places to play without having to climb through brush. The big benefit for us kids were the great climbing trees.
What will it take to reintroduce thinning the forests? One of the hallmarks of our time is the great lack of common sense.