Recently we traveled though the Black Hills in Wyoming and South Dakota.   A beetle is devastating the pine forests there.  The forest service is trying to balance, tourism, logging, and conservancy.  Additionally, I bought a book on the 1874 Black Hills Expedition led by the US Army.  It had lots of pictures of then and now.  I noticed that in virtually every picture of then, there were less trees than now.  My tentative conclusion was that forest fires were controlling the beetle and that a healthy forest actually has less trees!  As we hiked through the various cleared and burned areas of beetle devastation, I wondered if clear cutting and logging would actually help as opposed to "destroying" the forest?