Downed Timber

[Adam]

For those of you who may not know, downed timber is needed to replenish the nutrients in the ground for the other plants. If everyone who went camping stripped wood from the forest for their campfire, there would soon be no forest. This is why you typically can't use wood that you find around your campsite to start a campfire.

[northernbushape]

I would agree with that statement in areas where lack of dead-fall is an issue, but in other places, like BC for example, it is a good thing to harvest dead-fall from the forests.

Fire fighting techniques have become so efficient here that there is an over-abundance of dead-fall and debris in the forests which leads to unnaturally severe wildfires during fire season. The fire bans get longer every year and the situation only continues to get worse. This is debris that would normally fuel a naturally-occurring forest fire to a certain degree, whereas now it is much worse because of the over-abundance of fuel sources.

I think your thoughts are right on the money for the forests surrounding public sites that may see 50,000 campers in a year. Multiply that by 3 or 4 campgrounds in the same area and you have a big problem. In locations that see maybe 100 campers per year, it is not as big an issue at all.