The cutover land re-planted in single species tree plantations will NEVER be fire resilient, certainly not on a human timescale. Without a widespread rewilding of our forested lands, and significant action on climate change and carbon sequestration, summer will continue be stained by smoke and ash.

Here's the problem: old style preservation is not going to help if we try to preserve overgrown tree plantations. Preservation is not going to make tree plantations over into actual, living, biodiverse forests that exist in equilibrium with the climate, carbon and hydrological cycles. 

At the same time, thinning those forested lands is just going to leave them every bit as prone to wildfires as not; just for slightly different reasons.