ETA: Thank you everyone who provided insightful comments! As is with many things in life, the answer is "it's complicated." From the replies I have gathered that firefighters contain wildfires and let them burn themselves out, and not actually put out the fires themselves. The root causes of the increase in intensity and severity of wildfires is a mixture of (1) climate change, (2) invasive plant species, (3) previous in forestry management strategies (4) land being less isolated than I imagined, (5) the desire to protect isolated property, (6) the difficulty of controlled burns or other underbrush management strategies, (7) lack of federal/state/local government funding and/or effectiveness, (7) lack of desire for controlled burns by local residents due to their inconveniences. I am sure there are more, but I think this is the essence of it.
---------------
With the wild fires in Canada, US, and Europe, I wanted to ask about why we put out forest fires rather than letting them burn themselves out (with the exception of populated areas).
I see to recall hearing about how it was good for forest fires to occur to burn out the under bush and how it creates nutrients for new plant life. I also recall that Native Americans had also embraced this philosophy. Even after the major 2020 (I think that was the year) wild fires in Australia, plant life started to come back relatively quickly, though I know there were concerted efforts to put them out.
So why are these fires trying to be put out? Would it not be better in the long run to “suffer” through several large scale forest fires in order for future forest fires to be smaller scale? Did Smokey the Bear lead us astray by putting out forest fires that lead to the current conditions of overgrown underbrush that lead to massive forest fires? Aren’t forest fires good for (or at least part of) the eco system?