A new study finds no evidence that trees killed by drought or bugs make Southern California any more dangerous in forest fires than any other place with fewer dead trees.

That's considered a startling conclusion, running counter to conventional thinking by forestry officials and timber industry folks. The assumption is that dead trees make bigger fires.

So will officials back off on proposals to remove dead trees in wild lands?

Not likely. Studies serve to open the issue in the scientific community, not change things overnight. The study would appear to provide fodder for those want to minimize the timber industries presence in forests.

The authors include a wildlife biologist, the Center for Biological Diversity, the PRBO Conservation Science and the University of California, Davis.

Their peer-reviewed study focused on the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California where, in 2002 and 2003, drought and western pine beetles killed a lot of trees.

The authors used U.S. Forest Service analysis of fire severity following wildland blazes in those areas. The government usted satellite imagery that accounted for trees that were already dead before the fire.

Monica Bond, wildlife biologist and primary author said: "Our study found that areas with the largest size-classes of trees burned at lower severities than areas dominated by smaller trees, regardless of pre-fire tree mortality."