Be optimistic ... until the animals start entering Cape Canaveral two by two.

In "wilderness" areas, fires generally are more or less ignored. They're monitored so measures can be taken if they leave the wilderness and threaten something. In more developed areas, more fire-fighting effort is needed to minimize damage to human development. It's been a while since the Federal fire policy was to stop it immediately - these days they generally direct and control it to minimize damage to high-value areas, but to let it burn where it's not bothering much. Unfortunately, some areas haven't burned for so long that "letting it burn" results in some pretty spectacular effects, and will probably result in some parts of the forest changing to an entirely different plant/animal community. Was that going to happen anyway? Perhaps, especially in the more southerly forests in CA where climate change is drying things out.

I do agree that more can and should be done to manage forests. Letting them grow lush and dense (when there's water) leads to aggressive and damaging fires when they dry out. Native Americans in CA were known to manage forests with fire, burning off the underbrush frequently to keep the trees themselves healthy. The difference can be seen in how open Yosemite Valley was in early photos, compared to how overgrown it was in late-20th-century photos before the park service started brushing and burning things again.

What we have, as usual, is a battle of extremes in which nobody trusts anybody. Extreme environmentalists seem to think that the forests should be as they were without humans. Sorry, that hasn't been the case for 5-10K years, and forests in general are probably healthier for it. Extreme loggers raped the place over the last couple hundred years, leaving forests in poor condition and a lasting distrust of loggers. Selective cutting, as done on some private lands, can address forest health, fire control (appropriate intensity and frequency), and timber production. The govt (Forest Service and BLM) needs to figure out how to make that happen on public lands, despite the slash/run vs. no people battles.