In the 1990s, the US Forest Service in California had the opportunity, backed by sound science, greater public awareness, and political support, to potentially avoid the wildfire disasters of the early 2020s. The new guidelines—the Sierra Nevada Framework—were approved in January 2001 and called for landscape-scale land management of old-growth forests, riparian areas, and other ecosystems, as well as a more integrated approach to fire and fuels management across the state’s national forests. But as the history of the framework demonstrates, when politics, economics, and science collide, too often politics and economics prevail, and the framework was soon overturned.