I took one look at Yellowstone, and declared, "When this place burns, it's going to be horrendous". The policy was to never touch anything that dropped off a tree and expect to stop all small fires immediately. ...The result happened in 1988.
It is stopping fires that is the problem. If they were allowed to burn, then the forest would survive as it has for thousands of years before man ever stepped foot in it. And I'm sure some people with college degrees though it was a bad idea, and some without college degrees thought it was a good idea.