I'm not sure how it's done in California, but in a lot of places, they do something kind of similar to this. In areas with a very large buildup of fuel that put

I'm not sure how it's done in California, but in a lot of places, they do something kind of similar to this. In areas with a very large buildup of fuel that puts trees at risk of burning, they will cleacut a ring around the planned burn to keep the fire contained. However, they would not normally log all the trees within the burn area. The goal is to preserve the trees and clear out the fuel that has built up at the underbrush level. After the burn, mature trees help suppress further underbrush development. When trees are removed, it leads to a lot of secondary growth, which both promotes fire and is heavily susceptible to being killed by fire. This is fine if the goal is to maintain the area as a more open field-like space via frequent controlled burns (which we honestly should be doing more of; meadows are highly ecologically valuable), but if the goal is to maintain it as forest, then you don't want to remove mature trees.