The truth is that commercial logging doesn't prevent catastrophic fires, it causes them. The worst rates were on private lands where logging levels are highest and where the least natural forest remains. For example, in western forests from 1986 to 1991, mortality due to fire and disease on private lands increased 20 percent, while it increased only 3 percent on national forests and decreased 9 percent on other public lands. Logging makes forests more susceptible to both fire and disease. If a fire does kill an old-growth stand, the burned trees still provide valuable nesting habitat for birds of prey and countless other forest species.
Wildlife has little use for stumps.
In fact, the Forest Service's own documents state that it fights fires not to protect forest ecosystems, but rather to prevent burns from reducing the commodity value of trees that the agency intends to sell to logging companies. It's all about economics, not ecology. We didn't want anything from it. It's a national park. It's interesting, and we can observe the wildflowers, and it's beautiful.