Even the natives managed forest better than that “genius Governor”
According this article, the Natives were quite apt to manage the forests to great results. Unfortunately they caught European diseases and mostly died out well before US settlers ever show up in the West. So, when the settlers finally showed up, the forests were already unmanaged for a while (like for 200 years)!
I guess the fires are caused by smallpox!?
When I was doing a bunch of research on this topic (which I can’t do again right now sadly, as it is a lively current topic, and I wish I’d saved it all carefully), I found an account from the early 1900s, in IIRC WA state, of an old Native woman who came back to the area she had grown up in. She was shocked to see it was all overgrown with bushes, small trees, etc. She described that when she was a girl and young adult, they burned the area every few years to burn out the undesirable plants and keep the forest healthy.
So I’m not sure about no Natives on the west coast. It’s a fascinating topic and I will look into it again when I can. I remember finding maps of where the western forests had been burned by Ma Nature from lightning, and areas where Natives had managed them.